Like us on Facebook! : A qualitative study about online communication on Facebook

As of the moment Facebook is the world’s largest online social network with over 800 million active users and more than 50% of the users log on to the website on any given day. It is considered to be the most important social platform on the Internet since it reaches more people than any other social network. Social networks present a completely different way for consumers and companies to interact with each other, compared to traditional communication, and create an incredible challenge for corporations. The hard task that companies have to face is how to engage their consumers through interaction, participation, entertainment and innovative creativity. The pursuit of consumer engagement plays a key role in coping with the ongoing changes in social life as well as in consumer behavior. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate how companies engage customers through online communication at Facebook. In order to fulfill the purpose the authors chose to conduct observations of six Swedish companies active on Facebook; Marabou, Nelly.com, McDonald’s Sweden, Liseberg, ICA and Fotografiska. The research showed that companies use integrated marketing communication as a tool to involve and engage customers on Facebook. The results imply that there are key factors that characterized the observed companies’ Facebook communication. Frequent updates, clear information, visualized messages and customer involvement were vital in creating customer engagement and indicate how communication on Facebook is carried out by companies