Consumer Perceptions and Attitudes Towards Mobile Marketing

Background On Mobile Marketing

Mobile marketing can be defined as “Using interactive wireless media to provide customers with time and location sensitive, personalized information that promotes goods, services and ideas, thereby generating value for all stakeholders” (Dickinger et al., 2004). This definition includes an important concept of adding value not just for the marketing party, but also for the consumer. The literature shows a variety of technological platforms such as wireless application protocol (WAP), SMS, and multimedia message service (MMS) that are available to support mobile marketing applications (Barnes & Scornavacca, 2004; Dickinger et al., 2004).

SMS is the most popular mobile data application to date, showing phenomenal usage with 580 million mobile messaging users sending over 430 billion messages worldwide in 2002 (TTI, 2003). Text message services have been hugely popular for interpersonal communication, allowing users of all ages to exchange messages with both social and business contacts (Dickinger et al., 2004; Xu, Teo, & Wang, 2003). Xu, Teo, and Wang (2003) identified three consistent success indicators for SMS messaging. The first factor is the cost effectiveness and interoperability of the wireless infrastructure, the second is the high penetration of mobile phones (ubiquitous penetration levels of over 80% in some countries), and the third is the relatively low cost of the SMS messaging service.