ASIAN JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT RESEARCH Online Open Access publishing platform for Management Research

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1 Online Open Access publishing platform for Management Research Copyright by the authors - Licensee IPA- Under Creative Commons license 3.0 Research Article ISSN The impact of social networking media for Management/Engineering institutions promotion with special Pranjal Muley 1, Nirmala Joshi 2 1- Assistant Professor-Information Technology,Vivekanand Education Society,Institute of Management and Research, Collector s Colony, Chembur, Mumbai Research Head, Mumbai Educational Trust, Bandra (W), Mumbai pranmul@gmail.com ABSTRACT Internet has made the world smaller. Accessing information pertaining to any domain has not remained tedious and tiresome task. It is now available at fingertips. Additionally, with social networking, even more access to news and opinions about anything, which may help, sometimes, in decision making is there than ever before. In India, growth in users of Social networking media is remarkable. According to a new emarketer report, Worldwide Social Network Users: 2013 Forecast and Comparative Estimates, the number of social network users in India is expected to cross 100 million users and reach more than 127 million users by end of This trend is moving on. People spend more time while being connected on Social Networking Media in order to chat, sharing information, pictures, seeking opinions and many more. Many businesses and institutions grabbed the Social Networking Media as great influencer and using this as strong and quick medium for awareness and promotion. The present study aims to find out the impact of promotion activities of Management/ Engineering Institutes on users in terms of admission through Social Networking Media. Keywords: Social media, social networking, social networking media, internet, Facebook 1. Introduction Social Media or Social Networking has not remained new words to the Indian educated society. By and large, everyone from teenager to mature adult are well aware of facebook if not Social networking technically. A social networking service is a platform to build social networks or social relations among people who share interests activities, and many more. Social Networking Sites (SNWs) like Facebook, Orkut, YouTube, Twitter and Google+, which enable hundreds of millions of individual users to publish and share on the worldwide web, are made up of millions of lives. This term has been born around two decades ago. Right from the emergence of the first social media networks, social media has continued to evolve and offer consumers around the world new and meaningful ways to engage with the people, events and brands that matter to them. Social media is still growing rapidly and becoming an integral part of our daily lives. Living a digital life has become a part of the life. Social networking is now truly a global phenomenon. Considering the statistics on usage of these sites in India, a report on social media in India by the Internet and Mobile Association of India (IAMAI) and Indian Market Research Bureau (IMRB) says The number of social media users in urban India has touched 62 million by December 2012 and it is estimated to reach 66 million by June 2013," 141

2 There are 74 per cent of all active Internet users in urban India use social media and 80 million active Internet users in Urban India. Besides this 58 million individuals have accessed some form of social networking in Social Media has not only influenced individuals but the same has equally affected business world as well. Most of the businesses besides their websites have made their direct or indirect presence on these sites to create awareness, positioning themselves and marketing and selling their products and services. According to the Statistics of Facebook for , this is found that more than 1 million websites have integrated with Facebook in various ways; this has proved that the platform has become mandatory for most of the website to depend on Facebook. 2. Objective of study 1. The main objective of this study is to analyze whether Social Networking Media can be used as a good platform for promotional activities of the professional study institutes viz Management and Engineering. 2. The study also explored the importance on Social Networking Media in important decision making viz selection of institute for further studies. 3. Literature review Various studies have been conducted taking Social Networking Sites as Central Idea. Jothi et al (2011) in their research Analysis of social networking sites: A study on effective communication strategy in developing brand communication found that Social networking sites users of Face book, Twitter and Orkut have become a personal, product and corporate branding hub in India nowadays. Internet advertising and promotion for a product or service especially through social networking sites can become promising provided done in most interactive and innovative. Another study by Ranjitha et al (2012) on Influence of social media websites on promotion of products and services among the users says that despite of stay connected with family and friends, building professional relationship and network, social media is also emerging as one of the strongest marketing tool to create awareness. It is most useful where word of mouth, opinion play an important role to pick product or service. No doubt, Social Networking Media has become an indispensible part of daily life particularly students life. But it has another face too. According to research The impact of social networking usage on grades among college students conducted by Stollak et al (2011), it is revealed that how the use of social media sites, such as Twitter and Facebook,, which is growing among students as time spent on exploring these sites, impact on grades and thus affecting overall academic performance. One of the reasons for Social Networking Media to be popular amongst school and college students, is the rapid acceptance of any new technology. A study by Roblyer et al (2010) on Findings on facebook in higher education conducted Higher education faculty and students in mid-size Southern University and found that students are much more open to the possibility of using Facebook and similar technologies to support classroom work likely than faculty 142

3 4. Research methodology The study is an empirical study. Survey method has been used to collect the data. The nature of the study is descriptive where data are collected by convenience sampling method. Data Collection: Google survey online tool has been used to collect data, which provided an easy and rapid way to approach the respondents and helped reducing the post-work of traditional questionnaire method by converting data into table. 5. Research Design Sampling: The study adopted non-probabilistic sampling technique. Convenience sampling has been used to collect the data, which included volunteered responses. 5.1 Hypothesis Hypothesis: There is an impact of Social Networking media for Management/Engineering institutions. 5.2 Subordinate hypotheses are Social Networking Media is a good mean to advertise and for promotion activities. Social Networking Media can be a good mean for advertising and promotional activities for Management/ Engineering institutions. Social Networking media can be taken as help in selecting institution for admission. Significance level: Hypotheses have been tested at 5% of level of significance. Test Statistic: Z test has been applied to test the hypotheses. 5.3 Analysis and discussion The data analysis and discussion is as under: 97% of the respondents said Yes for use of social networking sites. This clearly indicates that today is the world of not only internet but also social networking sites. Major mass of people use social networking sites for different purposes. See Figure 1. Figure 1: Use of social networking sites 143

4 Social Networking sites have become an integral part of personal and professional life. Many corporate have made their e-presence on social networking sites, but...it is still a long way to go. Purpose of using Social Networking media is mostly socializing in personal way. See Figure 2. Figure-2 shows that approximately 60% people use Social Networking Sites for personal reasons and making new friends (networking). Almost 46% people take it as an entertainment. Surprisingly below than 10% people use this media for their business purpose in terms of Marketing platform and Connecting to their Customers. When taken opinion on 5-point scale about the Social Networking Media as a good mean of advertising and promotional platform, value of arithmetic mean is observed 2.2. So according to the measure of central tendency, this clearly reveals that most of the respondents see that Social Networking Media is a good platform for advertising and promotional activities. 67.6% respondents were agree with the fact that Social Networking Media is a good mean for advertising and promotion activities, whereas 17.6% were not sure and approximately 15 % respondents were disagree. See Figure 3 and refer Table 1. Figure 3: Social network means for promotions and activities 144

5 Table 1: Social Networking Media is a good mean for advertising and promotion activities, Index Ans Frq. % 1 Strongly Agree Agree Neutral Disagree Strongly Disagree Another related question on 5-point scale about Social Networking media as agood advertising and promotional platform for Management/Engineering institutes when asked, values of Mean and Standard deviation were 2.5 and 1.0 respectively with CV of 39%. When asked further about its impact on users, values observed for Mean, Standard deviation and CV were surprisingly similar to the previous question. See Figure 4 and Figure 5. Figure 4: Social network a good platform for management/engineering institutes promotion Figure 5: Promotion of management/engineering institutes on social networking media impact users 145

6 This is clearly revealed while analyzing Figure 4 that most of the respondents look Social Networking Media as one of the good platforms for the promotion of Management/Engineering institutes but surprisingly there is slightly greater percentage of respondents who are not sure whether it is really impactful or not. Therefore, it indicates that people are very much in favour about Social Networking media as a promotional platform but at the same time they are little doubtful about its force on users for Management/Engineering institutes promotion. In the other question, when asked to rank the factors namely Word of Mouth, Social Networking sites, Print Media, Hoardings and Banners and Image of Institute that influence admission process of an institute, the Mean values of two factors i.e. Word of Mouth and Image of Institute among other factors were observed higher as and respectively. Surprisingly, Mean value for the Social Networking sites was the lowest. Refer Figure 6 and Figure 7. Figure 6: Factors influencing admission process Figure 7: Factors influencing admission process 146

7 Analysis of data reveals that most of the respondents feel that Word of Mouth and Image of the Institute are most the convincing factors while taking admission. On asking question whether Social Networking Media can be advised to select the institute for admission, Only 34% responded were in favour of taking help of Social Networking Media for selection of Institute. 39% responded stood neutral on this question. Only 28% disagreed with this thought. Refer Figure 8. Figure 8: Medias on institution admission Figure 9: Social networking media role Analysis of data clearly reveals that most of the respondents are young (21-40 years) who believe in Social media and probably spend more time on it. They are mostly students and working professionals who always wish connected either through laptops, ipads, netbooks or mobile phones. Testing of Hypothesis Having applied Z-test on each subordinate hypothesis, it has been observed that Z-test value (0.5) is falling under the acceptance region ie. (Z <=1.96 at 5% significance level) for each hypothesis. Therefore, all subordinate hypotheses were accepted. 147

8 Since subordinate hypotheses were the part of the main hypothesis, hence the main hypothesis has also been accepted as a result. 5. Conclusion Billions of people around the world are using social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Therefore using such sites for promoting a product, service or a business becomes important. One can have a wide access to the number of people across in minimum time is a huge benefit. This attribute adds more importance in terms of promoting Management/Engineering Institute. Use social media and social networking is far cheaper than traditional marketing and advertising methods. Even more promoting Management/Engineering Institute using social networking sites proves a view to determine your customers and potential customers. But in India though new generation is using social networking media to its fullest as India has heading a way to become second largest country in terms of internet users, still important decision making like selection of Management/Engineering Institute for admission is not completely based on their epromotions. Few factors like Word of Mouth and Image of Institute are still considered above all before stepping further for admission in Management/Engineering Institute. 6. References 1. Jothi et al (2011), Analysis of social networking sites: A study on effective communication strategy in developing brand communication, Journal of Media and Communication Studies Vol. 3(7), pp Ranjitha et al (2012), Influence of social media websites on promotion of products and services among the users: An empirical study, Spectrum, A Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 1(3). 3. Roblyer et al (2010), Finding on Facebook in Higher Education: A comparison of college faculty and student usage and perceptions of social networking sites,internet and Higher Education 13, p Stollak et al (2011), The impact of social networking usage on grades among college students, Proceedings of ASBBS, 18(1). 148