Umeå universitets logga

The study aims to reveal companies' persuasion strategies on TikTok. TikTok has shown to be an effective marketing tool and today consumers feel like they often overspend their money on stuff they can't afford. This context birthed the idea to our study. This is a form of a case study since we have dug deeper into 3 companies communication on TikTok and how they use the platform convince the consumers to buy their products. The companies we have looked at are Joe & the Juice, Ganni and Gymshark. We have combined Multimodal critical discourse analysis with a rhetorical analysis. We are analyzing both visual elements and the meaning of these and how power is used in this communication. A rhetorical analysis is all about persuasion and exposing persuasion, which is what the study is all about. We discovered that companies today build communities where they are the leaders and control the agenda of the participants of the community. We start off by determining the company's identity and how this is used to persuade the consumer to join their community. The companies use different techniques here that are well adapted to their brand. The premium fashion company wants people to join their community to reach a higher class in the society. The modern coffee shop and the Social Gym brand wants the consumer joining their communities because they are on the same level and the consumer should feel like they are friends with the voice behind the brand. The study ends with a discussion why this strategy may be effective and how it might be persuasive to the consumer. We found a lot of prior studies and theories that show that the human being has a desire in its core to feel like they belong to a group of people, they are drawn to that. The human also has a drive to express themselves and who they are, then we discussed that to show that they belong to the community created by these companies they can buy their products and show them off. This supports the thought of the community persuasive strategy as effective.