Companies are sponsoring bloggers posts to attract consumers

Blogging has grown to a trendy phenomenon during the past decade. According to Kietzmann, Hermkens and McCarthy (2011) blogs were introduced to the public in the late 90s and ever since blogs’ popularity has grown.  Nowadays the Internet holds more than 100 million blogs and there are even own Internet search engines devoted to them (Kietzmann, Hermkens & McCarthy, 2011). Therefore consumer blogs hold a great potential for marketers, advertisers and many more. Gummerus, Liljander and Söderlund (2015) point out how cynicism against ordinary advertising has risen. This has stressed the need for companies to find other ways to reach their customers (Gummerus, Liljander & Söderlund, 2015). It is said that the way marketing is done, is changing because social network marketing has affected the scene in a larger scale. These days consumers want more interaction, not one way monologue coming from the marketer...

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Power is shifting through social media, consumers are taking the driver’s seat

Power is shifting through social media, consumers are taking the driver’s seat, brands may find them self´s demoted to passengers. Social media has altered the power balance between consumers and brands. Consumers are no longer passive bystanders, they have the power to create content and affect brands in a way that before social media was if not impossible, at least extremely challenging.  However now consumers has a myriad of social media tool at their disposal, through which they can enforce power over brands and affect them in numerous ways. In other words social media is shifting the power, from brans to consumers. Thus the aim of this paper aims to investigate how consumers enforce their power is enforced on social media. 

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