ABSTRACT

New phenomena come and go on a frequent basis. But every now and then something with potential to change the business environment comes to the forefront. The business world is not immune to any impact that may arise. Social media is one such phenomenon. Social media which is sometimes referred to as social networking and Web 2.0 refers to collaboratively produced and shared media content (Tapscott and Williams, 2008). Social media came into existence in the 1990s. (Boyd and Ellison, 2007) documented that the first recognizable social network site was launched in 1997 called Six degrees on sixdegrees.com. It allowed users to create profiles, list their friends and, beginning in 1998, surf friends lists. While Six Degrees attracted millions of users, it failed to become a sustainable business and, in 2000, the service closed. In 2002, social media received a great boost with the launch of Friendster. Within a year of its launch, Friendster boasted more than three million registered users and a ton of investment interest. In 2003, my space, LinkedIn, Last FM, Tribe net, Hi5 etc. sprang up. In 2004, popular names like Facebook Harvard, Dogster and Mixi evolved. From 2006 till now a lot of social media sites have been launched like twitter, 2go, whatsapp, google plus, badoo etc. The tools and strategies for communicating with customers have changed significantly with the emergence of the phenomenon known as social media, also referred to as consumer generated media. This form of media describes a variety of new sources of online information that are created, initiated, spread and used by consumers’ intent on educating each other about products, brands, services, personalities and issues. Social media have become a major factor in influencing various aspects of consumer behaviour including awareness, information acquisition, opinions, attitudes, purchase behaviour, and post-purchase communication and evaluation (Mangold & Faulds, 2009).