Undergraduate research project to be published in international journal

An independent research study written by class of 2013 Smeal College of Business Marketing major Setenay Kucukemiroglu has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Commerce and Management. Kucukemiroglu's study, titled "Online Word-of-Mouth Communication on Social Networking Sites: An Empirical Study of Facebook Users," was co-authored with Ali Kara, professor of marketing at Penn State York. "[T]wo years ago when I started the project, there weren't that many other research findings on the marketing of Facebook. I thought it would be not only an interesting topic, but one that could inform marketers and management alike." - "The project started off as an honors course paper. With that, I had to collaborate with a professor on what I wanted to do for my honors project," said Kucukemiroglu. "From there, my topic was born." Setting out to study the factors influencing college students' social networking word-of-mouth behavior, Kucukemiroglu developed a survey instrument designed to measure the constructs assumed to have influence on word-of-mouth communication on social networks. "I pursued this area of research because, two years ago when I started the project, there weren't that many other research findings on the marketing of Facebook," said Kucukemiroglu.