• 1. Discuss how models, concepts and theories in the curriculum relate to core topics of the course.
• 2. Identify and argue for the most fitting models, concepts and/or theories applied to analyze concrete case situations related to the topics of the course, especially when applied to topics presented in the home assignment.
• 3. List and critically reflect on the pros/cons as well as possible inherent contradictions of models, concepts and theories when applied to specific issues, especially when applied to issues presented in the home assignment.
• 4. Demonstrate the ability to reflect on your own activities and interactions throughout the course by identifying a portfolio of own contributions and arguing for their substantiveness and relevance for the content of your home assignment.

Consumers are increasingly present on social media platforms. This provides large opportunities for sharing and co-creating company-related content. The social media landscape constantly changes and new categories and platforms form separate socio-cultural spaces, which adds complexity and underlines the importance of understanding this “landscape” better. Furthermore, traditional marketing channels are becoming more and more cluttered and inefficient. Thus, it is an obvious move for companies to develop a presence on existing relevant social media platforms. It is important to understand that social media platforms form the basis for many different types of socio-cultural spaces that mirrors individual and collective consumer identities and where users participate for very different reasons. For instance, Facebook in the interaction space among friends as opposed to a Facebook Brand Page are very different spaces with different norms and traditions for interaction. Thus, these spaces are characterized by specific communication cultures, which entails the application of very particular communication strategies by those parties that are active on the social medium; and eventually social media specific positive and negative discourses. This also means that different types of company interventions and communication are welcomed with different strength leading to different types of relationships between the brand and consumers as well as to different attitudinal and behavioural outcome, for instance, Liking as compared to (long term) loyalty. The open question is how much attention companies are giving to loyalty building efforts as compared to campaign-type utilization of social media platforms. Experience shows that the social media activity level is significantly reduced after a campaign and the company needs to constantly feed the media platform with content to attract users. If companies wish to focus on methods where content and mutual exchange on social media platforms are developed based on users’ own initiative, it is important to understand what aspects of identity seeking motivates consumers to engage in more permanent interaction and co-creation.

This course identifies and selects socio-cultural spaces on social media platforms with different characteristics representing the variety of social exchanges and communication that is found there. From this basic understanding this course discusses why and how consumers are motivated as a consequence of their own identity seeking and construction? How can companies communicate and build strong relations to these spaces of individual and collective identity seeking. How and when and with what methods should companies most optimally intervene – if intervene at all? What is the best balance between passive facilitation and active intervention? And what is the role of communication campaigns as opposed to loyalty efforts? And finally, what could a synergistic interplay between using social media marketing campaign methods and loyalty building look like?

Theoretically, the course will mainly include aspects of marketing communication theory, brand community /stakeholder theory, the field of strategic cognition and consumer identity and consumer culture theory. The students will furthermore be provided with methodological insight to support data collection from social media, for instance, netnographic methods and discourse analysis. As the field of social media marketing transforms very rapidly this course will include input from companies and professionals in the field who on a daily basis meet the challenges and opportunities that social media platforms and user’s life in these spaces provide.

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