Consumers' attitude towards mobile advertising

Abstract

Mobile advertising has become popular in the world, especially in Asia due to its special features: ubiquity, personalization time-sensitivity and interactivity. Short Message System (SMS) has been generally used in mobile advertising. To investigate consumer behavior in mobile advertising, theory of reasoned action (TRA) (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1980; Fishbein and Ajzen 1975) is employed in this study. TRA proposes that a person's behavior is guided by intention, which is a function of subjective norm and attitude, in which beliefs will form his or her attitude. Based on TRA model, the aim of this study is to investigate the behavioral intention to receive and read mobile advertisements, with attitude serving as the mediator. This study also examines the underlying factors which affect the attitude, including opt-in and opt-out permission, ubiquity and personalization. Survey data was collected from 781 mobile phone users in Hong Kong. The data shows that mobile phone users hold unfavorable attitude towards and intention to SMS advertisements. Informativeness, entertainment, credibility, irritation, ubiquity and opt-out permission have significant effects on attitude and entertainment exhibits the strongest effect on attitude among the beliefs. Attitude is the major mediator between belief dimensions and behavioral intention.