| dc.description.abstract | A major research gap exists in the area of maritime management and digital marketing. Various past studies have been conducted on the issue of marketing and its correlation with maritime industry, however, no research has been conducted on finding the relationship between maritime industry and digital marketing. This study is novel in the way that it investigates the relation between the both for Norway. Again, it is the first study to investigate this relation for Norway. This study not only contributes to the literature but also helps the industrial experts in Norway to revisit their traditional marketing strategies. The current research works towards exploring the role of digital marketing in the maritime industry of Norway. The researcher opted for a quantitative research method as it was in line with the purpose of this research. The population of the research included the respondents who were living in Norway and were employed in the Maritime Industry. The researcher selected survey questionnaire as the data collection tool for gathering quantitative primary data from the respondents; the research had 120 respondents for the primary data collection. The research’s plan of analysis included simply the frequency and descriptive analysis of each question. The questions in the primary data were well formed and based on important justifications therefore the frequency & distribution analysis was found sufficient for the analysis part of this research. Conclusions for the Norway maritime industry includes: Majority of the companies have no digital marketing strategies in place; Majority of the companies are not using social media platforms and believe that biggest barriers to digital marketing are the knowledge and understanding levels towards these tools and methods which also require technical knowhow; Companies are largely relying on word-of-mouth, TV commercials and newspaper / magazine advertising, among other traditional marketing tools. This is mainly due to the perceived barriers to digital marketing. Recommendations for the strategy makers and benefactors representing the Norway maritime industry include: companies start investing and focusing towards digital marketing mainly through by increasing the current understanding levels of the concept and eventually making proper DM strategies; presence on social media needs to increase to have a channel that customers can reach the companies through; low investments levels of digital marketing need to change and higher investment and focus on DM is required; trainings and workshops for digital marketing are almost non-existent. The companies, in the Norway maritime industry, need to focus on conducting trainings and workshops for its employees so that the barriers of lack of knowledge and understanding are also eliminated | nb_NO |
