Due to recent developments in the mobile technology, increased penetration rates and inherent characteristics of the mobile devices, the mobile channel has morphed into an ultimate marketing vehicle, which enables business entities to establish a pervasive electronic presence alongside their customers anytime, anywhere. As soon as global companies realized the business potential, mobile services have infiltrated virtually every aspect of people’s lives. Leaving aside the unprecedented opportunities provided by mobile services in building and fostering customer relationships, mobile advertising itself became a huge revenue generator. In fact, mobile advertising revenue in 2007 was totalled to US$ 2773 million and is predicted to increase by 79% to US$ 4957 million in 2008, and is projected to exceed US$ 16 billion within the next 3–4 years (eMarketer, 2007).
These developments in the consumer environment have made mobile marketing an attractive area for research for the last couple of years. Although the academic literature on mobile marketing is accumulating, the topic is still under development and the research is in its early stages ([Barnes and Scornavacca, 2004] and Carroll et al., 2007) hence is highly inconsistent and fragmented.
The articles that are categorized under this category aim to develop models incorporating individual-level characteristics, such as demographics, motivations, traits and perceptions, social and cultural influences, and other consumer-based constructs to explain the adoption of mobile marketing and prediction of mobile consumer behavior. Building on Theory of Reasoned Action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975), Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen, 1985), Technology Acceptance Model ([Davis, 1989] and [Venkatesh and Davis, 2000]), Innovation Diffusion Theory (Rogers, 1983) and uses and gratifications theories of marketing literature, researchers focusing in the mobile consumer behavior have investigated various constructs independently or in relation with each other in order to validate existing models in the mobile context. A thorough investigation of the articles on mobile consumer behaviorenables further classification of the mobile consumer behavior literature based on the constructs the articles prominently focus on. These constructs include consumer-based variables that influence the acceptance of mobile marketing, perceived value, attitudes, trust, satisfaction, loyalty. Such a classification allows identification of the level of researcher attention on major constructs of consumer behavior within the mobile marketing research stream.
Since customer value is what every business entity ultimately seeks, there is a need to understand which elements and unique features of the mobile medium provides value from the consumers’ perspective. Articles that are categorized under this factor focus prominently on the perceived value construct and investigate the relationship between perceived value and its antecedents and consequents in the mobile context. Mobile values are based on distinctive features of mobile devices, such as “always with the user” and “always on” and “always connected”. It is found that usefulness is not the top concern for mobile consumers; instead mobile services are used primarily for convenience ([Kim et al., 2007], [Magura, 2003] and [Mahatanankoon et al., 2005]).
Empirical studies suggest that both utilitarian value ([Bauer et al., 2007] and [Kleijnen et al., 2007]) and hedonic value contribute to consumer adoption of mobile marketing. It is found that the influence of hedonic value is stronger when compared to utilitarian value in building attitudes towards mobile technology in general (Bruner & Kumar, 2005), and especially among mobile users with low trust of mobile technology and low internet experience (Park & SuJin, 2006). The hedonic value of the mobile internet is found to correlate negatively with the importance of service cost, and positively with use convenience and information quality, while the utilitarian value is found to positively correlate with the importance of service cost and connection stability (Park, 2006). In another study, Kim and Hwang (2006) identified socio-economic status and maturity (measured by age and education) as antecedents to consumers’ value tendency, and examined the relationships between mobile consumers’ value tendency and their perceptions on service quality. Results of the study showed that mobile users of lower maturity level are more likely to have hedonic tendencies than those of a higher maturity level, who in contrast exhibit more utilitarian tendencies. Mobile users’ hedonic tendency is found to be positively associated with perceptions on service quality. More importantly, the mobile users who have a higher level of utilitarian tendency are found to have more negative perceptions on service quality. The importance and co-existence of emotional and functional values were also validated in mobile internet (Kim et al., 2007), mobile data services (Yang & Jolly, 2006), mobile multimedia services (Pihlström, 2007) and location-based mobile services (Pura, 2005).
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
0 comments:
Post a Comment