Investigating Mobile Users Attitude towards Mobile Marketing and Its Impact on Behavioural Intention: A Case Study in Udaipur City
Dr. Tarannum Hussian
Post Doctoral Fellow,
Faculty of Management Studies,
MLSU, Udaipur
Prof. Hanuman Prasad
Professor,
Faculty of Management Studies,
MLSU, Udaipur
Dramatic change in mobile technology results with communication over long distances, flexibility in communications, information search, information sharing, anytime and anywhere, videos, music, chatting, internet surfing, and a lot more have become possible with improvements in mobile technology. The world has entered into an era called "the mobile era".
Regardless of the enormous marketing potentials of customized and interactive marketing messages of mobile marketing, academic research in this field is still in its early stages (Barnes and Scornavacca, 2003). A strong urge for empirical research is uttered by academicians and practitioners. The present study contributes towards our understanding of the nature of mobile marketing communication in consumer markets.
Thus the study is aimed to inspect consumers’ attitude towards mobile marketing in Udaipur City which will help companies to understand the importance of mobile advertising and invest more in developing and adopting mobile marketing applications. To make it more precise, this study aims to explore the relationship between the attributes of customers who use mobile phone and their behavioural intentions. A total of 387 mobile users aging between 15 to 44 were surveyed via structured questionnaires. The results revealed that there exists a positive relationship between the attributes of customers using mobile phones and their behavioural intentions.
Keywords: Mobile Marketing, Advertising, Consumer attitude, Behavioural Intention.
Introduction
Dramatic change in mobile technology over a period of 10 years, mount the popularity and use of mobile phones. Plorification of mobile phones made it so easy and faster than ever to connect with people. Communication over long distances, flexibility in communications, information search, information sharing, anytime and anywhere, videos, music, chatting, internet surfing, and a lot more have become possible with improvements in mobile technology and integration of internet into a mobile medium. Thus mobile phones are no longer used for communication alone. The world has entered into an era called "the mobile era". According to Michael and Starter, the mobile phones, often said smart phones performs everything from browsing internet to online shopping, mobile banking and mobile payments. Thus the mobile phone turns out to be a third screen after TV and computer. Which was 200 million only in the year 1998; the convergence of wireless telephony and internet, higher penetration rate of the mobile phone have pooled together to present a new platform for advertising, known as mobile marketing. Global penetration of mobile phone has reached 87% with 6 billion subscriptions. The potential of target marketing, interaction with consumers and managing customer relationship, made mobile devices an important channel for marketer.
Regardless of the enormous marketing potentials of customized and interactive marketing messages offered under the purview of mobile marketing, academic research in this field is still in its early stages (Barnes and Scornavacca, 2003). A strong urge for empirical research is uttered by a academicians and practitioners. The present study reacts to these calls for more academic research and theoretical development and contributes towards our understanding of the nature of mobile marketing communication in consumer markets.
Thus the study is aimed to inspect consumers’ attitude towards mobile marketing in Udaipur City which will help companies to understand the importance of mobile advertising and invest more in developing and adopting mobile marketing applications.
This paper comprised of eight sections, namely (i) introduction (ii) the rationale of this study, (iii) literature review, (iv) objectives of this paper, (v) research method, (vi) findings and discussion, (vii) limitations, and (viii) conclusion.
Rationale of the study
The penetration rate of mobile phones is so high, which has resulted as the new and emerging platform to deliver advertisement of products and services through short message services (SMS), multimedia message services (MMS), mobile applications, mobile websites and web banner as well as mobile T.V. Thus it has become very essential to study how marketing via this new medium affects consumer attitude.
The research outcome will defiantly help marketing experts to be aware of the mobile phone user behaviour, and they can formulate a strategy to target and stimulate a favourable purchase decision towards their product or services.
The research findings regarding mobile phone users attitude towards mobile marketing in the Indian context, is significant to policy makers, government regulatory authorities in telecom industry, as they can ensure, protection and safety of rights, personal data of mobile phone users especially in Rajasthan where mobile marketing is in its infant stage. The results will be valuable for policy restructuring and monitoring, developing policy towards unwanted messages in order to improve the business environment.
Literature review
Rapid development in Information Technology and the emergence of internet caused new activities budding in the field of marketing. The diffusion of this new technology has induced changes in the world of advertising which led to the emergence of e-commerce and e-business. (Kalakota and Robinson 2002)
Along with the explosion of hand-phone or mobile phone usage the world over, leads to emergence of a new phenomenon called mobile commerce. Ample of marketing practitioners and academicians advocates that mobile marketing is a subset of mobile commerce (Barnes and Scornavacca, 2004).
Siau, et al. (2001) defined mobile commerce as a novel type of e-commerce transaction conducted over mobile devices using wireless telecommunication networks. In spite of emergence of mobile-commerce, marketers’ desired to establish personalized as well as any time and any where communication with target customers which led to the emergence of new approach of marketing known as mobile marketing.
Mobile Marketing
After reviewing the mobile marketing literature thoroughly it can be stated that practitioners and academicians have projected a number of definitions of mobile marketing.
Salo and Tahtinen (2009), simplify the term by saying that Mobile advertising is all about sending and receiving advertisements to and by mobile devices.
Karjuluto generalize the phenomenon and gives a definition from a broader perspective, “Mobile advertising refers to every type of marketing or sales promotion performed through the mobile method (Karjaluoto et al. 2004). According to Leppaniemi et al. (2006), mobile marketing is the use of the mobile medium as a means of marketing communications.
Rapid development and growth of technology in mobile devices enables users to surf internet, locate positions with the use of GPS (Global Positioning System), tweeting and chatting with friends or movies games, music, videos and many more (Liu et al. 2010).
Mobile advertising and Internet advertising have many features in common both are emerging media used to deliver digital texts, images, and voices with interactive, immediate, personalized, and responsive capabilities (Yoon and Kim, 2001).
Attitudes towards Mobile Marketing
Figure 1: Antecedents of Attitude toward Marketing via Mobile Devices
Objectives of the Study
Research Method
Research Design
Research design refers to the overall strategy which is adopted to integrate the different components of the study in a coherent and logical way thereby ensures the effective treatment to the research population. It provides a detailed outline of how an investigation will take place. It actually constitutes the blueprint for the collection, measurement and analysis of data.
The aim of this study is to illustrate the attitude of consumers towards mobile marketing in the context of Udaipur city and to understand the relationship among the variables that form attitude. Thus conclusive research design was adopted for this research. As the term suggests conclusive research is useful in reaching conclusion or decision making. This study is descriptive in nature because it describes how marketing messages on mobile devices influences Consumer Attitude. It is described as formal and structured, which tends to use samples, which are subjected to quantitative analysis.
Data collection
The task of data collection begins after a research problem has been defined and research design has been chalked out. The researcher has collected two types of data i.e. primary data and secondary data.
Secondary data sources, for this research was obtained from published documents, reports, articles and research papers in academic journals and other published materials related to the subject matter in the present research, the primary data were obtained mainly through structured questionnaire.
Sampling
Keeping in mind the difficulties and cost of sampling, convenience sampling method was used for data collection.
A total of 400 mobile users aging between 15 to 44 were surveyed via structured questionnaires. Questionnaires with missing responses were excluded from final analysis. Final sample size was reduced to 387 mobile users.
Data analysis
As the present study is structured to examine various issues regarding mobile user's perception towards mobile marketing and advertising. The data retrieved through the questionnaire were analyzed with the help of different statistical packages like SPSS ver. 19 along with AMOSS 22.
Structural Model with Standardized Path Coefficients
Table: 1 Standardized Path Coefficients
|
Estimate |
|
|
Attitude <--- Perceived Value |
.218 |
|
Attitude <--- Trust |
.197 |
|
Attitude <--- Interactivity |
.128 |
|
Attitude <--- Control |
.220 |
|
Purchase Intention <--- Attitude |
.222 |
Findings and discussion
The result of the Structural Equation Model analysis reveals that consumer factors have significant influence on attitude towards mobile marketing. The consumer factors evaluated in this study includes Perceived Value, Trust, Perceived control, Interactivity. Based on the findings of this study, on the influence of consumer factors on attitude towards mobile marketing, this study concludes on the following: that perceived value, trust, perceived control, and interactivity has a significant positive influence on attitude towards mobile marketing.
The findings clearly show that customers had balanced attitude towards different modes of mobile advertising. They are not very much convinced with the current approaches of mobile marketing by marketers but they are very much fond of mobile shopping and mobile social media. However mobile users do not prefer mobile payment over credit card payments but are quite satisfied with QR codes.
This study concludes that consumer attitude towards marketing messages have positive influence on purchase intention. A positive attitude towards marketing messages is more likely to lead to a favourable purchase intention. The study concludes that consumer attitudes are directly linked to Purchase Intention of consumers on the mobile service platform. This study concludes that there is a significant positive effect of consumer factors on purchase intention.
The finding of this study shows that the positive attitude towards mobile adverts can be sustained, only when marketing messages are sent at appropriate time and in a reasonable amount so as to avoid disturbance and disruption to consumers, which could ultimately lead to frustration. In order to increase positive attitude towards such messages and decrease irritation, messages should be simple, short, and straight, to the point and user friendly. Based on the findings of the study, mobile advertising should be informative and the information provided in the marketing message should be relevant, trustworthy and customized for the individual consumer.
Limitation
Firstly, a convenience sampling method was used in this study, which limits the generalizability of the findings. Secondly, the respondents in age brackets of 15-44, are more familiar with information technology in comparison to the general consumer population, might perceive mobile marketing as more acceptable than other samples. Thirdly, this study excludes many socio-demographic variables from being analyzed; though the variables like age and gender were considered. Other variables such as income profile, rural-urban, etc. could have been included in the study which could have been of help in predicting the intention and attitude towards mobile marketing.
This research work only looked at mobile phone users Udaipur city. Mobile phone users in other parts of the country might pose different attitude towards marketing messages as a result of the peculiar contextual and cultural environment of each state.
Conclusion
This paper aimed at investing consumer attitudes towards mobile marketing. Generally, the attitude of the respondents in Udaipur city towards mobile adverts is positive. Consumer factors have been found to be the most significant factor in mobile marketing. According to the findings, various variables can be considered as some key indicators of the marketing mix plans. M-marketing can also be considered as some better marketing mix components. Since Udaipur is in developing stage, the rate of technology advancement and its acceptance is high. Thus, this city would seem to be a promising market regarding emerging tools of mobile marketing.
References
Barnes, S. J. & Scornavacca, E. (2004). Mobile marketing: The Role of Permission and Acceptance. International Journal of Mobile Communication, 2.
Kalakota R. & Robinson M (2002). M-business: The Race to Mobility. New York: McGraw-Hill.
Siau, K., Lim E. P. & Shen, Z. (2001). Mobile Commerce: Promises, Challenges & Research agenda. Journal of Database Management 12(3), 2001, 4–13.
Salo, Jari & Tähtinen, Jaana (2009). Retailer Use of Permission-Based Mobile Advertising. Retrieved October 10, 2011 from: www.taloustieteet.oulu.
Karjaluoto, H., Leppäniemi, M. & Salo, J. (2004). The Role of Mobile Marketing In Companies’ Promotion Mix: Empirical Evidence from Finland. Journal of International Business and Economics, 2 (1), 111- 116.
Leppäniemi, M., Sinisalo, J. & Karjaluoto, H. (2006). Mobile Marketing Research (2000-2005): Emergence, Current Status & Future Directions,” Proceedings of the CMC 2006 11th Conference on Corporate and Marketing Communications, Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 21-22.
Yoon, S.J. & Kim, J.H. (2001). Is the Internet more effective than traditional media? Factors affecting the choice of media. Journal of Advertising Research, 41, 6, 53–60.
