The thesis explores advertorials, advertising made to look like editorial content, from a consumer behaviour perspective.

Introduction                 Consumers are exposed to a staggering amount of advertisements each day. This so-called advertising clutter makes it difficult for marketers to reach the consumer. Therefore, in the late 1980’s marketers started to use unconventional ways of advertising. One of these was the use of advertorials, a form of advertising that borrows the appearance and other features from editorial material.

Problem discussion       Since advertorials are made to look like editorial material, but is in reality an advertisement, it is of interest for researchers and practicing marketers alike to know what effects using them has on the brand. Previous research differ in the view on advertorials; some claim that it is a good way to advertise as it is seen as less intrusive and irritating, while others say that the deceptiveness makes people irritated.

Purpose                        Through a quantitative case study of Aftonbladet.se, a Swedish news website, from a consumer perspective analyze the effects the level of deception of online advertorials have on 1) brand credibility, and 2) the irritation level, on both the medium and the advertiser. Also, 3) to thereafter examine if possible alterations in irritation and brand credibility trigger changes in brand attitudes towards medium and advertiser.

Background                  Newspapers have long been dependent on the revenue from advertisement sales, even more so since the emergence of free newspapers and news web sites. With this in mind, the importance of advertorials stands clear. In the on-line world, where readers jump from article to article and from site to site, the advertorials play an important role in “catching” the reader and make him/her stay on the site. Moreover, advertorials is one of the formats of on-line advertising which commands the highest revenues.

Frame of reference        The on-line context provides additional ways of deceiving a consumer, in comparison with print media. Therefore, the frame of reference focuses on previous research on the effects the deception can have with a consumer and the perception of the brands included; irritation, brand credibility, brand attitude, likeliness to return to site, and advertising avoidance. For later testing, 11 hypotheses were defined.

Method                        The study uses a mixed method approach, with both quantitative and qualitative data. An experiment, with one control group and two different manipulations formed the basis for the data collection. 19 out of the 103 participants in the quantitative study were asked to participate in the qualitative study as well.

Analysis                        As the distribution of the data was found not to be normal, the Kruskal-Wallis test was used to test the hypotheses. All hypotheses but one were accepted. Further, to explore the relationship between variables, hierarchical multiple regression analysis was also performed.

Conclusion                   It was not possible to prove that a higher level of blend-in decreased credibility of any of the two brands, neither does induce more irritation. It was also not possible to discern a statistically significant effect on the attitude towards the brands, likeliness to return to Aftonbladet.se, or future avoidance of adverts by Volvo. However, several of the participants of the interviews expressed concern over the long-term effects the use of advertorials may have on the brand of Volvo. Further, advertorials are definitely highly deceptive, and almost half of the respondents did not realize they were reading an advert even at the lowest level of blend-in, which is currently used by Aftonbladet.se and Volvo.

One of Sweden’s most well known monopolies is approaching its end, Apoteket AB. A re-regulation of a state owned monopoly is nothing new but it happens within an interesting trade. Since the government is in total control of the whole re-regulation process, we found it interesting to see how they managed to include the potential individuals who want to take over a pharmacy. After all, many are the times the government has emphasized the importance of small firms.

Out of the approximately 900 pharmacies owned by Apoteket AB, 150 are going to be sold to individuals. This group is called “small enterprise cluster”, and this cluster became the focus of our thesis. We wanted to get an insight into this group, since it is more complex and diverse compared to the large corporations entering the market.

Purpose

The purpose of this thesis is to measure the willingness to take over pharmacies among the employees of Apoteket AB, as well as to analyse how the government's support has affected the decisions of individuals.

Method

In order to get a good view of the re-regulation process we chose a qualitative approach, where we performed personal interviews with 6 respondents equally spread out on 3 pharmacies in a medium sized Swedish city and the surrounding area. The interviews where performed in a semi-structured manner.

Besides the primary data, secondary data was collected. It builds the foundation for the theoretical framework and the analysis of the interviews. Since the theoretical framework was created before the research was performed, the study used a deductive research approach.