Samenvatting

This graduation project has been written for client Arana and Tasman Consulting. Arana has
requested the subject matter to be about Tasman’s social media use, in order to create an advice
about how Tasman can reach more brand awareness among their stakeholders. This was the
objective of this project.
Several research methods have been used through the creation of this report; the main method has
been desk research, where data is sought through literature review. Another method that has been
applied is interviewing, where the researcher held semi-structured interviews with the client as well
as semi structured mini-interviews with professionals in the field of Mergers and Acquisitions over
the phone. A last research method has been an analysis of social media use by Tasman’s
stakeholders.
Literature review has been the major technique for gathering the data that was needed to create the
final advice. It entailed reading articles, journals, essays and case studies in order to first, create a
sufficient base of knowledge about the M&A field and second to help answer the various research
questions and sub questions that had been erected.
The interviews with the client were held in order to show the data found and obtain the client’s
opinion on this data, as well as to brainstorm for more ideas and to pinpoint the direction the
research should take. The several mini-interviews with professionals in the field of M&A were held in
order to create a reliable source of information that was not literature review and in order to help
answer the various research questions and sub questions.
The last research method that has been used was an analysis of the social media use of Tasman’s
stakeholders, to find out if they were using social media, and if so which ones. This has been done by
taking a random sample of 100 names from Tasman’s stakeholder list and looking for social media
profiles from these people on Twitter and LinkedIn.