Fastighetsmäklarbranschens digitalisering : En kvalitativ studie om Instagram som verktyg för relationsmarknadsföring

Sammanfattning: The digitalization of the society is a fact and organizations must now be adaptable to where their customers are located. Along with this the ways in which we communicate have changed as well as the way you target your marketing. Already in the sixties customers begun to require products adapted to them and their requests, which revealed the need of a shift of focus in the marketing of organizations. Instead of putting the needs of the company first, organizations started to direct their attention to the needs of the customers. It all comes down to the customer and the user, who is now in charge of the evolution of the brand as well as for the underlying conditions of the interactive dialogue between them and the organization. Social media allows companies to be present and available to a larger extent than before which facilitates the opportunity to get a deeper understanding of the customers and their presence on social media. The real estate business is a complex market to operate within as the competition is very tough. This entails high demands on companies in order to stick out from the crowd and achieve visibility. Especially in a society where consumers are daily exposed to advertising and exhortation to commerce. The real estate agents most powerful communication tool is the ones who are generated from recommendation and word of mouth, which in turn is accomplished from maintaining a good relationship with customers. But what opportunities do real estate agencies have on social medias? And how can they achieve and exhort relationships through Instagram? By performing a qualitative study containing interviews with real estate agencies along with observations of their Instagram accounts, the authors of this study could deny that there was any common mode of operation between the organizations usage of the platform for building relationships. Instead the authors identified several strategies in accordance with the theory of how to engage users, which they believed the companies to be unaware of. The analysis of the Instagram accounts urged the thought of a correlation between the number of followers and the perceived reliability of the accounts as the user gives the account their faith by following - which in turn can be recognized by the follower’s followers and acquaintance. However, does the number of followers not necessary imply to more users interacting with the published content, which rather could have connection to the kind of content the account provides with.