This document summarizes a study on Generation Y consumers' attitudes toward social media marketing in Trichy, India. The study surveyed 150 students ages 18-33 on their internet, YouTube, and Facebook usage and attitudes toward social media marketing. It was found that more frequent use of these platforms correlated with more positive attitudes toward social media marketing. The study concluded that familiarity with social media influences consumer attitudes, and marketers should engage consumers on these platforms through entertaining, informative content to promote their brands.

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ANOOP MOHAN
PhD Research Scholar (PT)
PSGR KRISHNAMMAL COLLEGE
Mail Id: anupmohandrsr@gmail.com

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A STUDY ON GENERATION Y CONSUMERS ATTITUDE TOWARD SOCIAL MEDIA
MARKETING IN TRICHY
ABSTRACT
Social media and social media applications that build consumer communities involving
rich user-generated content are new marketplaces and or tools for marketers. Social media is now
a developing phenomenon in marketing. Marketers are beginning to understand the use of social
media as a component in their marketing strategies and campaigns to reach out to customers.
Promotions, marketing intelligence, sentiment research, public relations, marketing
communications, and product and customer management are sub-disciplines of marketing that
may use social media. This study aims to specify Generation Y consumers’ attitudes toward
social media marketing. Given this context the questionnaire prepared for gathering data was
distributed among 150 students of Jamal Mohamed College belonging to age group 18-33 during
August 2013. Simple random sampling method was used to collect data. IBM SPSS V-19
version was used for data analysis and T-test and ANOVA was applied for hypothesis testing.
Furthermore, it would be useful to support this study with other studies that examine views on
marketing with social media taking into account of companies in Trichy.
Keywords: Social media marketing, Social Media, Consumer attitude, Generation Y

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INTRODUCTION
The media landscape has undergone an immense transformation over the past
decade, Social media, i.e. social networks or micro blogs, are increasingly replacing traditional
media, and the buzz about these new marketing opportunities seems unlimited: millions of fans
declare their love to Coca-Cola on Facebook, the roller babies of the Danone’s water brand
Evian have become the most frequently viewed video on YouTube, and thousands of Starbucks
consumers work together on the platform ystarbucksidea.com to create new ideas for the popular
coffee house brand – for free. This trend of consumers becoming fans of brands on social media
platforms and using social media as an increasing source of information about brands leads to the
assumption that social media in addition to traditional marketing communication instruments
exerts an important impact on a brand’s success. In 2013, companies invested more than 1.54
billion dollars for the implementation and support of social media communications. Additionally,
consumers are turning away from traditional media such as TV, radio, or magazines and are
increasingly using social media to search for information. They regard social media as a more
trustworthy source of information than the traditional instruments of marketing communications
used by companies .
Therefore, it is crucial to differentiate between firm-created and user-generated social media
communication and examine the impact of these two forms of social media communication
separately. Moreover, we aim at juxtaposing the effects of firm-created and user-generated social
media communication, as these two instruments of social media differ significantly in terms of
company control.

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GENERATION Y
The “Generation y” refers to those individuals born after 1980 who come of age after
the turn of the century. Believed population, they have attracted a great deal 2013, higher
education values, attitudes, behaviors, and demographics characteristics. In fact published an
extensive report in 2010 reviewing how today’s teens and twenty reshaping our nation on all
level “Each generation has unique expectations, experiences, generational history, lifestyles,
values, and demographics that influence their buying behaviors”. Several of the characteristics
and preferences used to describe Millennials imitate the values of previous generations, while. to
describe this cohort include: confident, connected, self impatient, digital natives, experiential
learners, pressured to perform, ambitious, technologically savvy and team oriented. Many of
these characteristics present both challenges and opportunities for marketing organizations.
LITERATURE REVIEW
Attitude toward social media marketing
According to Kotler and Keller (2006, 194), attitude can be described as ‘‘a person’s
enduring favorable or unfavorable evaluation, emotional feeling, and action tendencies toward
some object or idea.’’ Attitudes can shape people’s minds, making them like or dislike an object,
moving them toward or away from that object. Thus, the behaviors of people are influenced by
attitudes and make them behave in a quite consistent way toward similar objects (Kotler and
Keller).
The better the attitude a person has toward a brand, the more likely he or she is to use the
product. Conversely, the less positive the attitude, the less likely he or she would be to use the
product (Chiou et al. 2008). According to Shiau and Lu (2010, 856–867), ‘‘when users perceive

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that blogs are important and valuable, they are likely to use blogs again. Their level of
satisfaction also impacts intent to continue using blogs.’’ Cha (2009, 85) found in his study that
‘‘the more people perceive shopping services on social networking sites as useful and easy to
use, the more favorable they feel toward shopping for real items on those social networks.’’ On
the contrary, Cha also found that ‘‘perceived enjoyment has a negative association with shopping
attitude toward real items on social networking sites’’ (p. 85).
An iProspect (2007) report stated that social networking sites affect purchasing decisions of a
meaningful percentage of Internet users visiting these sites. Miller and Lammas (2010) stated
that the expectations that marketing with social media applications can cause tremendously
effective marketing are very high. According to a recent study by DEI Worldwide (2008), 70
percent of consumers have visited social media Web sites to get information. Moreover, 49
percent of these customers made a purchase decision on the basis of the information they
gathered.
In this context, it is required that marketers identify the sites in which the influence level
is high. Also, they can develop methods to have a close relationship with users who visit these
sites (iProspect 2007).
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Research objective
The main aim of this study is to find out the attitudes of consumers toward marketing with
social media in terms of their Internet use, YouTube use and Facebook use.

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Research sample
The scope of the research is comprised of students from Jamal Mohamed College in
Trichy. The questionnaire prepared for gathering data was distributed to undergraduate students,
postgraduate students and research scholars of the college during September 2013. The
questionnaire prepared within this context was given to 150 students using the basic random
sampling method
Data collection
A questionnaire form was used as a tool for gathering data. In the first part of the
questionnaire are questions about demographic information and multiple choice questions about
the use of Internet and social media; in the second part, a 5 point Likert scale is used to measure
consumer’s attitude toward social media marketing.
LIMITATIONS AND SCOPE OF THE STUDY
This study attempted to specify the attitudes of consumers toward marketing with social media.
A consumer-based scale has been used for this purpose. The research sample includes
undergraduate and postgradute students between the ages of 18 and 33—the age group that uses
social media the most, as gleaned from the literature review performed. It would be beneficial for
the samples of further studies to include people between the ages of 35 and 54.
HYPOTHESIS
Experience with social media tools.
Cha (2009, 80) indicated that ‘‘the more familiar people are with a medium, because
of their frequent use of it, the more favorably they feel toward that medium.’’ According to

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Zajonc (1968, 1), ‘‘mere repeated exposure of the individual to a stimulus is a sufficient
condition for the enhancement of his attitude toward it.’’ Monroe (1976, 43) mentioned that ‘‘the
greater the amount of experience a buyer has with a particular brand, the more information he
possesses about the brand.’’ Aldridge, Forcht, and Pierson (1997) claimed that when familiarity
increases the comfort level of users, they spend more time on the Internet than others do and tend
to shop online more. Hoffman, Novak, and Peralta (1999, 84) found that ‘‘the more experience
one acquires online, the less important are the functional barriers to online shopping.’’ Therefore,
H1: Consumers who use the Internet frequently have more positive attitudes toward marketing
with social media than consumers who use it rarely.
H2: When consumers’ frequency of YouTube use increases, their attitudes toward marketing
with social media become more positive.
H3: When consumers’ frequency of Facebook use increases, their attitudes toward marketing
with social media become more positive.

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TABLE:1
One way Variance Statistics about the Attitudes of Consumers towards marketing with
Social media in terms of Frequency of Internet Use
Frequency
of Internet
Use
N Average Std.dev F P
Attitude toward
marketing with
social media
Once or Twice
a day
78 3.38 .728
10.225 .000
3 or 4 times a
day
33 3.40 .483
5 or more
times a day
39 3.93 .548
Inferences:
The significance value for the Consumer attitude towards marketing with social media is .000 (P
value), which is less than .05. So we accept the H6.
When consumers internet use increases the attitude towards marketing with social media changes
positively.
There is significant difference between attitudes towards marketing with social media in terms of
internet use.

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TABLE NO-2
One- Way Variance Analysis Statistics about the Attitudes of Consumers towards
marketing with Social media in terms of Frequency of Youtube Use
Frequency of
youtube use
N Mean Std.dev F p
Attitude toward
marketing with
social media
Never 27 3.22 .631
9.39 .000
Once a Week 42 3.49 .696
2 or 3 times a
week
48 3.40 .578
4 or 5 times a
week
12 4.37 .186
6 or more times
a week
21 3.84 .616
Inferences:
The significance value for the Consumer attitude towards marketing with social media is .000 (P
value), which is less than .05. So we accept the H7.
When consumers internet use increases the attitude towards marketing with social media changes
positively.
There is significant difference between attitudes towards marketing with social media in terms of
Youtube use.

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TABLE NO-3
One- Way Variance Analysis Statistics about the Attitudes of Consumers towards
marketing with Social media in terms of Facebook Use
Frequency of
Facebook use
N Mean Std.dev F P
Attitude toward
marketing with
social media
Never 24 3.05 .546
12.38 .000
Once a Week 30 3.35 .736
2 or 3 times a
week
39 3.49 .684
4 or 5 times a
week
6 3.05 .164
6 or more times
a week
51 3.95 .439
Inferences:
The significance value for the Consumer attitude towards marketing with social media is .000 (P
value), which is less than .05. So we accept the H8.
When consumers Facebook use increases in the attitude towards marketing with social media
changes positively.
There is significant difference between attitudes towards marketing with social media in terms of
Facebook use

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FINDINGS
There is significant difference between attitudes towards marketing with social media in terms of
internet use.
There is significant difference between attitudes towards marketing with social media in terms of
YouTube use.
There is significant difference between attitudes towards marketing with social media in terms
of Facebook use
SUGGESTIONS
It will be important for marketers to prepare applications and content that both help
consumers continuously follow social media and help audiences become participants. Hence,
content and applications that are entertaining, educative, informative, and encouraging of
discussions can be created. For instance, company and brand fan pages can be opened as
Facebook accounts. Special coupons for products or services can be offered on these pages;
entertaining contests can be prepared for customers, and invitations for events can be sent to
these customers. Also, by participating in online customer communities having too many
members, it is possible to share educative and informative contents that enable promotion of the
product. Members may be allowed to review, comment on, and rate the products, services, and
brands.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, social media as a rising trend creates a marketplace that attracts a
wide range of users. The ways in which marketers can effectively use this kind of a marketplace

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should be researched. However, it should be kept in mind that social media users do not consider
activities with marketing purposes in social media applications as positive. In this context, it is
more appropriate for companies and marketers to shape their marketing activities in social media
environments than for viewers and or participants to do so. Furthermore, it would be useful to
support this study with other studies that examine views on marketing with social media taking
into account companies in Tamilnadu.
APPENDIX
QUESTIONNAIRE
Age 18-21 22-25 26-29 30-33
Gender: male female
Family Income: <100000 100000-200000 200000-300000 Above 300000
Frequency of Internet use:
Once or twice a day Three or four times a day Five or more times a day
Frequency of YouTube use:
Never Once a week Two or three times a week Four or five times a week
Six or more times a week
Frequency of Facebook use:
Never Once a week Two or three times a week Four or five times a week
Six or more times a week
Attitudes toward marketing with social media
1. It is necessary for companies to use social media sites such as Facebook for the purposes of
marketing.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
2. It is a good idea to market with applications such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogs, generally
known as social media.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree

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3. Marketing with applications such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogs, generally known as
social media, is very interesting.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
4. I think that companies should take part in social networking sites such as Facebook.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
5. I like marketing with applications such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogs, generally known as
social media.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
6. I find it useful to market with applications such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogs, generally
known as social media.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
7. I believe that marketing with applications such as YouTube, Facebook, and blogs, generally
known as social media, will be amusing.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
8. It is necessary for companies to use video sharing sites like YouTube for the purposes of
marketing.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
9. It is necessary for companies to use Wikis for the purposes of marketing.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
10. I think that marketing with social media is the future of marketing.
Totally disagree disagree no idea agree totally agree
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