Abstract
This chapter suggests that mobile marketing research take an Interaction Design approach through the adoption of the Locales Framework as an alternative perspective to investigate the context of mobile marketing. The research shows how such an approach can integrate marketing and new technology research, highlighting the issues and opportunities brought about by the technology within a domain context, i.e. mobile marketing. Given that there are not many theoretically based frameworks available to support mobile marketing research, the application of this framework provides a roadmap for future research in mobile marketing and helps build the body of knowledge in this field.
TopIntroduction
According to the marketing literature, the perspective of mobile marketing is often related to consumers’ traits and behaviors such as acceptance, attitude, experiences, responsiveness and perception. These have been have been intensively investigated over the past few years by Barwise and Strong (2002), Bauer et al. (2005), Haghirian and Madlberger (2005), Okazaki (2004), Rohm and Sultan (2006), and Tsang et al. (2004). Much of this research was conducted using a single research approach such as interview, experiment or survey. This form of research mainly focuses on the characteristics of individuals in terms of how they view mobile marketing. The outcomes from the analyses may provide justifications for the phenomenon studied but they are not thorough enough to comprehensively detail the full mobile marketing concept (Gopal & Tripathi, 2006).
Key Terms in this Chapter
Civic Structure: Aspect 2 of the LF, civic structure show how locales involve and interaction with each other. It concerns the facilitation of interaction with the wider community within and beyond a person’s known social worlds and locales. In addition, gaining understanding of locales requires prior knowledge of events and or actions, along with a reasonable expectation of what events are to follow.
Mobile Coupon: It is generally a form of discounts or entitlements embedded as either on a text message via Short Message Service (SMS) or a graphical message Multimedia Messaging Service (MMS) with expiration dates to entice consumers to make purchases for suggested items.
Mobile Marketing: In this chapter, it is regarded as a form of technology intervention in the context of a marketing campaign, looking at either advertising or promotion, or both.
Individual Views: Aspect 3 of the LF, individual views define the perspectives, concerns and roles of a particular locale, as well as of the multiple social worlds they are in. A single perspective is how an individual sees one social world (the people and the locales), and it is dependent on the level of engagement with the center of that world, whereas multiple viewsets incorporate the individual’s views of all the social worlds with which he or she is engaged. Individuals personalize their views to suit their tasks according to their current level of engagement.
Mutuality: Aspect 5 of the LF, mutuality concerns how group members make their presence known to other in order to maintain both their actions and their interactions with the social world.
The Locales Framework (LF): The LF offers an alternative approach for investigating the context of mobile marketing. The research shows how such an approach can integrate marketing and new technology research, highlighting the issues and opportunities brought about by the technology within a domain context, i.e. mobile marketing. Given that there are not many theoretical based frameworks available to support mobile marketing research, the application of this framework provides a roadmap for future research in mobile marketing and helps build the body of knowledge in this field.
Locales Foundation: Aspect 1 of the LF, the locales foundation involves a group of individuals, related either physically or remotely, who are brought together by their needs, who require cooperative actions, and the sites and means that support these groups. The elements of foundation include a basic understanding of how communication will take place in order to direct the group towards achieving their goals.
Interaction Design (ID): ID has a firm foundation in the theory, practice, and methodology of traditional user interface design, its focus is on defining the complex dialogues that occur between people and interactive devices (Preece, Rogers, & Sharp, 2002) such as computers, mobile communications devices and portable digital assistants. ID can also be considered as the design of the behaviour of, and determination of goals for, artefacts, systems, and environments (Palino, 2004). ID does not simply aim at providing the end users with a positive usage experience achieved through traditional industrial design. Rather, it goes beyond that, providing people with positive experiences both from a technological and non-technological perspective (Danzico, 2006). In the context of mobile marketing, ID serves not only as an approach for user-centered design practice but also as a solution to help overcome the limitations of the marketing research perspective. Applying ID know-how that aims to facilitate technology interventions in social contexts seems to be a stronger approach than treating mobile technology as just a different type of marketing channel (Lee & Muhlberger, 2007). In other words, ID serves as a methodological space where informed research methods enhance a framework to provide interesting and valuable results for a mobile marketing context. The ID approach is applied with the use of a framework known as the Locales Framework (LF). This framework enables an holistic overview of what mobile marketing means and the solution offered by ID is enhanced due to the populated mobile marketing research methods which overcome the individual limits of a single mobile marketing research method.
Interaction Trajectory: Aspect 4 of the LF, interaction trajectories serve as a means for understanding how a social world develops, how people interact, and how the activities in which they engage contribute to the various courses of action over time that can be past, present and future.