The Role of Online Reputation Management in Strategic Business Decisions in Ericsson

Sammanfattning: With this immensely and immeasurably growing Internet technology, the need for onlinereputation management (ORM) is also growing accordingly. It is increasingly seen as animportant means by firms to create stronger alliance between customers and the firm (Bealand Strauss, 2008). ORM is relatively new which theoretically and empirically very youngphenomenon in which very few researches have been made around the area ever since.Hence, the intention of this research is to fill the knowledge gaps recognized and useEricsson Company to conduct an exploratory qualitative research to give empirical value tothe study.The purpose of this study is to explore how ORM can play role in making strategic businessdecisions through branding and construct a model that shows relationship among ORM,branding and strategic business decision. The relevant research concepts that are discussedin the literature review are linked through logical links depicted in the model.After the model is constructed Ericsson Company was taken as a case and qualitative study was made using an in-depth interview with the company’s expert in this area in Ericssonglobal to see how the concept of ORM, branding and strategic decisions in the model areinterlinked to each other. This research has answers on how this company perform its ORM,how ORM can influence branding, how branding can influence strategic business decisionand in the end how ORM can influence strategic business decision.From the finding of this research, ORM has influence on branding and brand has influenceon strategic business decision. Finally, it can also be concluded that ORM has impact on strategic business decisions through branding.