Katharina Raab received the appreciation award for her Master’s thesis and her outstanding achievements in the Master’s program in Communication Management.
Once a year, the Federal Ministry of Education, Science and Research honors graduates of universities and universities of applied sciences for their outstanding, above-average academic achievements with the appreciation award. Prerequisites are adherence to the study period, excellent examination results and an outstanding grade for the academic thesis.
Katharina Raab, a graduate of FHWien der WKW’s Bachelor’s program in Corporate Communication and the Master’s program in Communication Management, was nominated for the award. Her excellent performance in her studies and her impressive Master’s thesis were well received by the jury. She was presented with the Appreciation Award 2024 on November 21.
Green brand positioning in food marketing
In her master’s thesis, Katharina Raab deals with the active positioning of a brand as sustainable (green branding). In her study, she examined the effect of different positioning strategies on consumers’ brand attitudes.
The results show that both emphasizing functional ecological product benefits and conscious emotional appeal are effective green branding strategies. The Master’s thesis was supervised by Senior Researcher David Bourdin:
“Working with Katharina Raab, I was impressed by her professionalism, independence and commitment from the very beginning. Her work extends previous findings in several respects and thus makes a relevant contribution to the scientific discourse in green branding. The study structure of her experimental research design is comparable to those in international journals and she has applied analytical methods that go far beyond the usual requirements for Master’s theses. Numerous recommendations for action can be derived from the results for companies that want to communicate their sustainability efforts authentically and credibly to various target groups.”
Sieglinde Martin, Head of Department of Communication and the Communication Management study programs at FHWien der WKW, congratulates her on this extraordinary award:
“Congratulations to Katharina Raab for her excellent, above-average performance! With her work, she has closed an important research gap in sustainability communication and provides a practice-oriented guide for companies.”