IKEA, Volvo och Sverige : - Varumärken i samspel

Title: IKEA, Volvo and Sweden – Brands in interaction Authors: Viggo Lundbergh Akbari & Marcus Engström Aim: The purpose of this bachelor’s thesis is to examine commercial actors’ use of state- formulated ideas about national attributes. This, by investigating IKEA’s and Volvo’s self- describing websites to see how they contribute to the national marketing of Sweden. These companies have a huge impact on how Sweden is portrayed internationally and the Swedish state wants them to market Sweden. Thus, it is of relevance to investigate how they portray Sweden to see if it corresponds with the ideas formulated by the state for the official branding of Sweden. To do this, two research questions have been formulated: How does Visit Sweden's brand platform come to be expressed on IKEA's and Volvo's self-describing websites? Does IKEA’s and Volvo's self-describing websites constitute nation branding? Method & Material: Qualitative text analysis and five self-describing websites each from IKEA and Volvo. Main Results: Visit Sweden’s brand platform is expressed on IKEA’s and Volvo’s self- describing websites. All parts of the brand platform can be found and moreover, the results are showing that it constitutes nation branding in the form of commercial nationalism according to the bachelor thesis’ theoretical framework. Number of pages: 56 Course: Media and Communication Studies C Department: Department of Informatics and Media University: Uppsala University Period: Autumn 2017 Tutor: Göran Svensson Keywords: Nation Branding, Commercial Nationalism, Visit Sweden, IKEA, Volvo.