Know-How Exchange : E-Marketing

What about:

The Viral Marketing Impact on Consumer Buying Behavior of College Students

Regards,

David

Hello--this may be a long shot--but if you are looking for some kind of science behind the blogging phenomenon and social networking and how those actions influence markets, check out the theory of the "long tail"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Long_Tail

Hard for me to explain (but I once saw an article that succintly explained how blogs are affecting the news cycle (via the long tail theory) so I got it then.

The college-age population is largely fueling the citizen-journalism and social networking communications wave so it might fit with your topic. Mainstream marketers are looking for ways to harness the power and influence that social networks wield.

Its happening within the population at the individual level, not so much or at all at the administrative or institutional level. I'm assuming you need to make a hypothesis and research, test, and explicate something specific in your dissertation?

There may be institutions of higher learning that are using blogs and viral marketing (and certainly wikis) for teaching and learning (MIT, Stanford, JHU's Center for Technology in Education).

I just got my Masters of Science in marketing at Johns Hopkins in May 2005, so if you'd like to contact me:

Rebecca P.
rpenovich@yahoo.com

Good luck--its an interesting subject and one not yet exhaustively researched!