SOCIAL NETWORKING AS A NEW TREND IN E-MARKETING AMONG UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE STUDENTS - A STUDY OF SHIMLA TOWN (Pages 80-89) by Mr. U. Inderjit Singh in THE INTERNATIONAL MANAGER / ISSN: 2348-9413 (Online); 2348-9405 (Print)

E-marketing has become a burning topic in the business sector and has also been playing an outstanding role in the marketing strategy any business organization. However, certain questions such as how to apply e-marketing, especially how to utilize it to attract more visitors to a certain website is still a question of paramount importance for the advertisers. In the human race of e-marketing, new business models are being frequently introduced and new trends have started to emerge. One such latest trend is social networking websites. Resultantly large chunk of aspirants not only got attracted towards social networking, but also use online advertising companies to place their ads on the sites. In this paper an attempt has been made to explore online social networking as a new trend of e-marketing. Social networking websites like Orkut, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and YouTube are becoming more popular and has become a part of daily life among different segments including college and university students. The purpose of this study is to analyze the impact of social networking websites for students engaged in E-Marketing. It also focuses on the perception, beliefs, benefits, knowledge and preference of customers towards e-Marketing. An attempt has been made to study the acceptance rate of E-marketing among the students of Shimla town and its bearing on their purchase decision. The study has also advanced suggestions to improve delivery mechanism and also advertising, web-products & services to accomplish the objective of E-marketing. Chi square test, standard deviation and means are applied to accomplish the study objectives. Keywords: Social Networking, E-marketing, Perception, Web sites etc.