Ethical and Managerial Aspects of Social Network Advertisement

Social networking systems are relatively new to society and clarification on certain aspects of the system can be obtained through further research. There are many positive aspects of social networks, such as Facebook, that organizations could benefit from including stronger customer relationship management (CRM) techniques. On the other hand, questions are raised as to whether or not an organization who advertises on social networking systems experiences an increase in sales as a result. It is unclear whether or not these advertisements actually deter individuals from further using these types of social networking systems. If individuals who spend a large amount of time on social networking sites are deterred from further usage due to these advertisements, are there any benefits to them? Significant amount information can be relayed on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, but the question remains whether or not organizations are using this to their advantage. The present study used a sample of working professionals that were knowledgeable in the various options of social networking to test these assumptions. The three hypotheses dealt with the interplay of online social networking, advertising effectiveness, gender and age trends, and remaining the interplay with positive comments of the use of the ‘like' function and its impacts on consumer behavior, as derived from the review of relevant operations literature and from applying the basic tenants of Uses and Gratification Theory. All three specific research hypotheses were accepted in the null form.