Opening the gates to Sweden : A case study of the development of a marketing project for a non-profit association

Abstract: In today’s competitive business world, marketing is no longer considered a radical approach for the needs of public and non-profit organizations. The change in organizational need has led to rapidly broadened and deepened applications and marketing is nowadays seen as a management tool forsuccess. The biggest problems non-profits faces today are resource limitations, management and organisation problems. The Swedish Chamber of Commerce in France is a non-profit association in change. With the application of the commercial division and through the opening of the Business Centre in Paris the CCSF have engaged itself to be more business-oriented. A marketing project was implemented with the objective of promoting, informing and establishing a new network in Sweden. Having the responsibility of the management of this project my research question is: How is a marketing project of an organization with limited resources such as the CCSF to be conducted to promote a new commercial activity in a non-profit association context? The purpose of this study is to investigate how to conduct a marketing project in order to guide non-profit organizations with limited resources that want to commercialize their services, with the particular case of the CCSF. The theories used to fulfill the purpose in this study are mainly as a support in the construction of aproject process. The framework involves project  anagement theories, the strategic planning and the marketing theories. A qualitative approach was used opting for a deductive method since the outcomes of my study where going to be supported in my theoretical frame. Furthermore project management methodology was described for the practical work. The empirical chapter described the case of the project, the different actors involved and the results form the communication phase. The projects targeted groups were eight Swedish regional Chambers of offices two French institutions in Sweden; Invest in France and Maison de la France and twenty travel agencies in Sweden having France and business events in their offer. The project was concentrated in two principal areas: the relationship building and creating value to the service offer. The result of my study discusses the key steps to the construction of the project process in a nonprofit association context and recommends how to overcome constraints of limited resources, in order to help non-profit organization allocate their resources and become more competitive.