Mellanskog medlemmars och medarbetares inställning till SMS och e-post : en fallstudie

Sammanfattning: Communication, information and marketing are three of the main prerequisites for companies that want to increase their turnover. The everyday work for a Forest Manager within the forest owners' association Mellanskog consists to a large part of interpersonal communication, either by close vicinity contact or by phone calls. Interpersonal communication is time consuming and resource intensive. If the flow of information, communication and marketing does not function well then there is a lack of a base for development. This degree project is about these three important prerequisites and it has been carried out against the background of trends towards change and development that are visible in the forest owners' association Mellanskog. Mellanskog is situated in the middle of Sweden. The theoretical frame for the project consists of earlier research within the areas of information and communication theory, marketing theory, research on wireless communications media and research on factors supporting change. That utilisable information, good communication and appropriate marketing lays the foundation for developing good customer relationships and increasing the turnover is the basic premise on which this degree project is based. The aim of the project was to make a problem inventory through investigating the members' and staffs' attitudes to SMS and e-mail in the current daily information and communication flow and in the marketing procedures used at Mellanskog. In addition, a direct experiment is planed and it will use one-to-one focused marketing by SMS. The design of this investigation is in case study format. The methods used were questionnaires and interviewing. The interviews were carried out using a basic questions guide and the results were collected in narrative form. The statistical analysis of the data was carried out using descriptive statistics. The following questions limit the extent of the study: What are the forest owner's and the staff's individual opinions to information, communication and marketing by SMS. Do certain categories of forest owners require special techniques related to age, sex, "åbo" and "utbo"? Are there similarities or differences due to sex and/or age concerning prerequisites to the use of modern techniques? Which media do the customers and staffs prefer to use when they communicate? How could an experiment be designed and carried out if communication by SMS is being used? The main results point to Mellanskog's forest owners preferring to use e-mail compared to SMS for short messages, whereas the staff prefer using SMS. It is important for Mellanskog to note that forest owners have an openness towards trying new media, in this case e-mail, and that this could be an opening to encourage them to start trying to use SMS when communicating. However, there is a need for further investigation to be made before coming to any final judgement about this. The consequence could be a time consuming and complicated individualisation of contacts, however, this could eventually result in more effective information, communication and marketing. The continued process of development should be based on the premise that the demand and needs of separate categories of forest owners are different and that the marketing techniques must be based on different factors such as age, sex, åbo or utbo.