Several years of lackluster sales in the retailing industry have pushed expansion into new channels in an effort to exploit any potential opportunity. As more and more consumers embrace the World Wide Web it seems a natural expectation and assumption that this channel may be the salvation of the brick and mortar store. This study focused on college-age consumers' responses to purchasing on the Internet. Young adults were specifically targeted because of their generation's tech-savvy embracing of anything wired. Over 780 university students were surveyed and answered a 108-item self-administered questionnaire. The study specifically addressed the issues of how often and why Internet purchases were made. As expected over 95% of the college-age market uses the Internet and over 91% of that group completes online purchases. Close to a quarter of the buyers are spending over $500 per Downloaded by [Flinders University of South Australia] at 21:45 02 January 2015year on Internet merchandise and they are making those purchases with their own credit cards. They are purchasing banking service, concert tickets, apparel and entertainment products. These young adults are also buying cars, mortgages and appliances over the Internet, but in smaller numbers.Findings indicate that not all products are created equal when offered for sale on the Web. Motivating factors vary by product and generation. The results of this research have significant implications for future Internet marketing. [Article copies available for a fee from The Haworth Document Delivery Service: 1-800-HAWORTH. E-mail address: Website:

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Creating an academic assignment that closely parallels an advertising agency"s real world business experience is a challenge, but social media has destroyed many of the barriers that historically limited media options and completion of advertising plans. Because digital media is cost effective and easily used, commercials, videos, podcasts, and multimedia messaging can be filmed, edited, and broadcast, within the time frame of an advertising course This article presents an applied advertising project that incorporates YouTube, Flicker, MySpace, Face book, Twitter, Linkedin, Ning, Tagged, Google +, and other online social networking sites as the foundation for an integrated marketing communication strategy. Infusing social media into communication preferences expands the options students have at their disposal to visually display their ingenuity.Engaging students through media they identify with and comprehend augments learning while their familiarity and expertise with social media increases the likelihood of producing a germane product. This project is an experiential learning process where the real world business client benefits from the creative deliverables produced by motivated, technology savvy undergraduates.A basic college advertising course introduces students to the concepts and strategies of integrated marketing communication. Typically, students absorb the theories and regurgitate the information on standardized examinations. Understanding and applying advertising knowledge is the true test of learning and the motivation in developing this project. The primary challenge was to incorporate an assignment equivalent to an advertising agency"s real world business experience. To go beyond simply creating an advertising plan and to require completion of deliverables suddenly became a viable option through social media. Social media has destroyed many of the barriers that historically limited media options and completion of advertising plans.Because digital media is cost effective and easily used, commercials, videos, podcasts, and multimedia messaging can be filmed, edited, and broadcast, within the time frame of an advertising course The arrival of social media has not only brought exciting alternatives to traditional communication methods, YouTube, Flicker, MySpace, Face Book, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning, Tagged, Google +, and many other online networking sites are effortlessly accessed and available for inclusion in integrated marketing communication (IMC) strategies. This article presents an advertising project that assimilates online social media into the advertising plan.Social Media is an engaging medium that permits the user to compose, amend and circulate digital information at a nominal cost. Digital native undergraduates have immersed themselves in the technology and this assignment encourages them to transform captivation into marketing potential. Class members are responsible for organizing their own advertising agencies and then competing against other class agencies for the advertising account of...

and other such commercial references to social media applications are now commonplace in practitioner-oriented publications (e.g., Baker and Green, 2008a, 2008b; Bernoff and Li, 2008). Despite the ubiquity of social media, marketingbased scholarly research on the subject matter is sorely lacking. To this end, we define social media and explore the faculty-student social media communication gap. Bridging gaps in social media perceptions and use will only be possible following the identification of the specific gaps. We propose the use of gap analysis to compare educators' and students' perceptions of social media use. We derive the conceptual foundation for the mapping of potential gaps by extending the Technology Acceptance Model (hereafter, TAM) and by applying it to social media. This is enhanced by considering alternative drivers and outcomes applicable in higher education. Designed to help educators better understand the role social media plays in the classroom experience and to spark further interest in this topic, this research offers a first attempt at modeling social media use in higher education. To allow for the eventual testing of this conceptual model, the current study presents propositions with which to guide the initial empirical testing. Finally, to underscore the need for marketing scholars to pursue social-media based education and research, we offer a sampling of implications and avenues of future inquiry. Social Media Social media is a term that is widely discussed in the popular press and in various literature streams, but there is little agreement on how it is defined. The Oxford English Dictionary defines social as "living, or disposed to live, in companies or communities; desirous of enjoying the society or companionship of others; enjoyed, taken, spent, etc., in company with others, esp. with those of a similar class or kindred spirits" (1989, p. 905) and media as "newspapers, radio, television, etc., collectively, as vehicles of mass communication" (1989, p. 542). These definitions give us a starting point for understanding what social media is: a communication medium that is devoted to or characterized by interaction between participants or consumers of the medium. Under the guise of our definition, blogs, chat rooms, lifecasting, mashups, message boards, microblogs, multimedia messaging services (i.e., MMS), online gaming, photo sharing, podcasts, short messaging services (i.e., SMS), social bookmarking, social networking, vidcasts (vodcasts), video sharing, virtual worlds, vlogs, Webcasts, and wikis are all examples of social media. Even ratings-driven sites like Pick-A-Prof.com or RateMyProfessors. com, where students evaluate their professors, fall under the social media umbrella. All these modern-day examples reflect the social

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