Online Academic Social Networking Sites (ASNSs) Selection Through AHP for Placement of Advertisement of E-Learning Website

Abstract

Over the years the use of Social networking sites (SNSs) has grown tremendously. This popularity has led to the incessant need for marketers to concentrate advertising through these websites. The need of the hour is therefore to develop advertising strategies which are effective and efficient. With new SNS being launched each day, the important decision is to determine which SNS is the most appropriate for advertising for a firm. There are many forms and options of SNSs available with different purposes which allow the people to interact with each other such as social connection (facebook, google+, etc.), multimedia sharing (youtube, flickr, etc.), professional (linkedln, classroom 2.0, etc.), hobbies (on my bloom, pinterest, etc.), academic (researchgate, academic.edu, etc.), etc. Due to increase in the types of SNSs, the evaluation and selection of right SNS have become a complex problem for advertisers. In this research, the selection of Academic Social networking sites (ASNSs) is considered as a Multi Attribute Decision Making (MADM) problem for advertising of E-learning website. Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) methodology for the selection of ASNSs has been adopted. A real life case study is also presented to show the applicability of the proposed methodology.