Announcing the 2021 Thesis Award winners Josefin Grünberger Talent Acquisition Specialist COMPANY UPDATES SEPTEMBER 14 2021 CAREERS 7 min read Each year here at Precis we host an annual thesis competition, with the ambition of encouraging innovation within digital marketing from future digital superstars – even before their career has perhaps begun. The past 18 months have been challenging and required us all to adapt, perhaps more so for students compared to most. But we were thrilled to see over 15 fantastic theses, from both masters and bachelors students across Sweden, submit their projects to us for review. Content 01 Introducing our 2021 Thesis Award winners 02 Our previous Thesis Award winners 03 Where can I find out more? Over the past two months, a select group of colleagues at Precis have been reading through all of the submitted projects thoroughly and scored each one based on three main criteria: innovativeness, methodology and relevance to our industry. Needless to say, during the final calibration meetings, it was hard to pick a winner from an outstanding selection of submissions – however, one, in particular, stood out to all of us. In their thesis, “New Product Introductions – What Gets People Talking”, Rafael Czeszejko and Sophia Zhang-Pettersson from Stockholm Business School investigated the underlying factors that drive customer engagement during the introduction of new products. In today’s world of digital-first, it is becoming more accessible to measure something as historically intangible as word-of-mouth. Simultaneously, the digital era has also brought a vast increase in urgency in product launches along with increased competition – making the understanding of how your products are received on the market more important than ever. Apart from the study being extremely relevant, the jury also found the creativity and innovativeness of how the study was conducted impressive. Their thesis was also more accessible than other traditional methodologies such as surveys etc. with much smaller and more cost-efficient tools. Precisers love data, and we love cool ways of collecting data, so scraping social platforms to conduct this quantitative study was something that the jury thoroughly appreciated! Introducing our 2021 Thesis Award winners What fascinates you about digital marketing and why did you choose to study it? Digital technologies provide unique opportunities for people to connect with each other, as well as businesses and other organisations. This connectivity paired with traceability of consumer behaviour online led us to the field of digital marketing since it allows us to study some things which were impossible before. Analyses such as big data studies of Word-of-Mouth, precise studies of online customer journey and consumers’ real-time response to advertising, as well as news articles and product launches. These new opportunities push the boundaries towards finding new insights and testing already existing theories within marketing. Why did you pick this particular topic for your thesis? We chose the topic of Customer Engagement on social media because we are curious about how positive and negative Word-of-Mouth spreads during New Product Introductions. In other words, we are interested in why people tweet positive and negative opinions about newly launched products. This topic is vital not only when new products are launched, but also in order to understand the drivers of engagement on social media in a broader sense. Therefore, we wanted to contribute with new insights into this vital area by conducting a sentiment analysis of over 20 million entries on social media, which told us both the volume of entries for each product and if the content was positive, negative, or neutral. How do you think your findings can help marketers today? Our study provides insights for marketers on how customer engagement is driven by product characteristics and brand type. As a side product, it also illustrates the use of data analysis for gaining knowledge about Customer Behaviour. We examined multiple products across different industries, products that were either radical or incremental innovations and were from either functional or hedonic brands. The results provide guidance of which products are more likely to get a boost from Word-of-Mouth on social media and those which possibly could be damaged by it during new product introductions. Implications of the study reach further into branding and marketing strategy at large. Our previous Thesis Award winners The Precis Thesis Award is an opportunity for us to learn from the forefront of digital marketing, to explore new ways of doing old processes and a way to find rising-stars within the industry. One such star is Jakob Ferenius, former Thesis Award winner turned Associate Digital Specialist in our Stockholm office. We spoke to Jakob to learn a little more about his own project, and why he picked Precis as the place to start his career in digital marketing: What was your winning thesis about and why did you choose this topic? My thesis partners and I found brand associations fascinating. Indeed, many people say that a brand is worth no more than what people associate it with. Nonetheless, traditional methods of deriving brand associations are costly, restrictive, and not scalable. So we set out to explore how novel methods such as text mining could be used to determine what attributes, feelings, and attitudes people associated with a brand and how these associations were all interconnected. We used web scraping to extract tens of thousands of hotel reviews online, and then text mining to extract brand association networks from them. We subsequently used different marketing models and analyses to translate the results into actionable strategic marketing insights. We originally chose text mining simply because we were not confident with the quality of surveys or interviews. We wanted to work with hard observations; what people actually said about brands rather than what they say when we ask them about it. There is plenty of interesting and readily available data online that can give a more accurate and natural portrayal of consumers behaviours and opinions than a survey – and this data has a stronger connection to actual business outcomes And why did you apply for Precis? To give something my all, it needs to be something I believe in. Visiting Precis and talking to people, I got the impression that Precis lives up to its values and are great at what they do. It is a great place to grow, have fun, and have a positive impact on the world. Was there really any other alternative? Where can I find out more? If you’re a student of digital marketing or just interested in learning more about a career in this industry, head over to our student page to find out more. And for all hopeful thesis writers, see you next year! Share this Stay in the loop Sign up to subscribe I agree to receive newsletters by email from Precis, from which you can always opt-out. We will process your personal data for this purpose according to our privacy policy Relevant posts Organic and paid search synergies LEARN WITH PRECIS NOVEMBER 25 2021 Interviewing at Precis PRECIS PEOPLE OCTOBER 21 2021 Practical tips for achieving lightning-fast web performance LEARN WITH PRECIS SEPTEMBER 30 2021 Go to blog Google Partner | Premier Google Cloud Platform Partner Services Sales Google Analytics Certified Partner Services Sales Bing Ads | Accredited Profession Facebook Marketing Partner Stockholm Åsögatan 121 116 24 Stockholm Gothenburg Norra Allégatan 5 SE-413 01 Göteborg Copenhagen Esromgade 15, 1, 4.tv 2200 København N Aarhus Viborgvej 161A 8210 Aarhus V Linköping Wahlbecksgatan 25 582 13 Linköping Oslo Møllergata 12-14 0179 Oslo London 4 Hardwick Street Garnault Mews EC1R 4RB Helsinki Vilhonkatu 4B 15 00100 Helsinki Privacy Policy Cookie Policy Manage Your Preferences Yes, we do use cookies We use cookies to personalise content and ads, and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics platforms who may combine it with other information that you’ve provided to them. Learn more by clicking "Cookie Settings" or read our Cookie Policy. Settings Accept all