A Comparative Study of Traditional Marketing and Doing More with Less : The Case of Four Swedish Firms

Abstract: Background Marketing spending has grown dramatically over the last decade but the traditional market-ing strategies such as advertising in TV, on billboards and posters might not be as effective as they used to be. The phenomena, how to work with marketing with the use of limited capital, has attracted attention in different contexts lately. It may sound hopeless to reach all the way through by the use of limited capital but it although exist examples of compa-nies that have succeeded with this; they are doing more with less. Purpose The main purpose of this thesis is to examine how firms, by the use of no or limited finan-cial resources, could market themselves successfully and how such a marketing process look like. The other purpose is to identify or map out the difference among traditional marketing and doing more with less. Method With a more inductive research approach and a qualitative research method the data was collected for this thesis. Four companies were carefully selected and interviewed over the phone. The chosen respondents are; Tomas Gustafsson representing Brämhults, Per Holk-nekt at Odd Molly, Jan Gustafsson at Saltå Kvarn and Hanna Lundgren at WeSC. Conclusion We have concluded that many strategies can be successful in doing more with less. The strategies found in this study are; Public Relations, Brand Management, Packaging, Product Placement, Event Marketing and Unique Selling Propositions. A coherent pattern or proc-ess could not be identified but it exist similarities in the way that companies make use of marketing strategies concerning doing more with less. Moreover we came up with the con-clusion that the difference between traditional marketing and the strategies identified as do-ing more with less, besides the obvious cost aspect, is the connection that they are often presented in a way which is not as easy for the potential consumer to perceive as commer-cial.