Key factors of teenagers' mobile advertising acceptance
| Date | 17 May 2013 |
| Published date | 17 May 2013 |
| Pages | 732-749 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/02635571311324179 |
| Author | José Martí Parreño,Silvia Sanz‐Blas,Carla Ruiz‐Mafé,Joaquin Aldás‐Manzano |
| Subject Matter | Economics,Information & knowledge management,Management science & operations |
Key factors of teenagers’ mobile
advertising acceptance
Jose
´Martı
´Parren
˜o
Department of Marketing, Universidad Europea de Madrid,
Valencia, Spain, and
Silvia Sanz-Blas, Carla Ruiz-Mafe
´and
Joaquin Alda
´s-Manzano
Department of Marketing, Universitat de Vale
`ncia,
Valencia, Spain
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse key drivers of teenagers’ attitude toward mobile
advertising and its effects on teenagers’ mobile advertising acceptance.
Design/methodology/approach – A proposed model of affective (irritation and entertainment) and
cognitive (perceived usefulness) antecedents of attitude toward mobile advertising and its effects on
mobile advertising acceptance is analysed. The sample consisted of 355 Spanish teenagers. The model
was tested using structural equation modelling.
Findings – Findings show that entertainment, irritation and usefulness are key drivers of teenagers’
attitude toward mobile advertising. Moreover, perceived usefulness reduces irritation. The authors’
model also suggests that improving teenagers’ attitude toward mobile advertisements is a key factor
for teenagers’ mobile advertising acceptance.
Practical implications – This research offers practical implications for marketing managers
interested in targeting mobile advertising campaigns to teenagers. Marketers should take care of the
number and frequency of messages being sent in order to avoid teenagers being irritated by their
advertising attempts. Marketers can improve attitude through message personalization, content
relevance and enriching the sales messages with entertainment features.
Originality/value – While consumer-driven factors such as perceived control or trust have deserved
a lot of attention, little research has focused on the role of emotions on attitude and behaviour towards
mobile advertising. This paper combines the influence of cognitive and affective message-driven
factors on teenagers’ attitude and behaviour towards mobile advertising.
Keywords Mobile services,Attitudes, Teenagers, Irritation,Entertainment, Perceived usefulness
Paper type Research paper
1. Introduction
The rapid proliferation of mobile phones along with their technological development
has created a whole new channel for advertising (Liu et al., 2012; Saadeghvaziri and
Seyedjavadain, 2011). As such, mobile advertising has been conceptualised as “the set
of actions that enable firms to communicate and relate to their audience in a relevant,
interactive way through any mobile device or network” (Mobile Marketing
Association, 2010, p. 7). This set of actions includes the sending of short message
services (SMS) messages, the use of graphic or display formats, marketing using
search engines through mobile internet, bluetooth technology, couponing or the use of
applications and entertainment content – including mobile advergaming (MMA, 2010).
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available at
www.emeraldinsight.com/0263-5577.htm
Received 29 September 2012
Revised 17 December 2012
31 January 2013
Accepted 1 February 2013
Industrial Management & Data
Systems
Vol. 113 No. 5, 2013
pp. 732-749
qEmerald Group Publishing Limited
0263-5577
DOI 10.1108/02635571311324179
IMDS
113,5
732
The use of mobile phones as a communication channel has transformed the way in
which consumers process advertisingattempts. Being able to receive mobileadvertising
in the right moment and place can enhance perceived usefulness, increasing consumers’
receptivityto promotionsthat arrive on their mobile phones.Among consumers, teenagers
havebeen on the forefront of adoptingmobile services such asSMS and instant messaging
(IM) (Grinter et al., 2006) in the last few years.Teens use their mobile phones in anytime
and anyplace (even at the dinner table and in the bedroom) to maintain their social
relationshipsas well as to have fun (Castells et al., 2006). Furthermore,teenagers develop
social skills through the mobile phone devices and teenagers’ consumption learning is
mostly made by using media within their leisure activities (Batat, 2009). Teenagers are
expectedto be the future focus of a greatdeal of mobile advertisingcampaigns due to they
representa large share of early adopters of mobileservices and they develop consumption
competency through the mobile (Batat, 2009; Grinter et al., 2006).
The increasing role of mobile phones in consumers’ everyday lives – specially for
younger audiences (Soroa-Koury and Yang, 2010; Van der Waldt et al., 2009; Zhang and
Mao, 2008) – has led to continuous growth in mobile advertising budgets as marketers
realize that being connected all the time, everywhere through mobile phones can be seen
as a great opportunity to advertise, build, and develop customer relationships , and
receive direct response from those customers (Liu et al., 2012). As a consequence of
marketers’ interest it is anticipated that $20.6 billion will be spent on mobile advertising
worldwide by 2015 (Gartner, 2011). In 2011 alone, mobile advertising expenditure
increased by 358 per cent in Europe and by 722 per cent in Spain (InMobi, 2012).
The relevance of mobile advertising for marketers makes it a key task to gain
insight into the drivers and barriers to mobile advertising acceptance. Prior studies
(Kuo and Yen, 2009; Tsang et al., 2004) emphasise that attitude to mobile advertising is
an important construct for mobile marketing research because of its influence on
consumer’s intention to accept mobile advertising.
Irritation and entertainment have been found affective antecedents of attitude toward
mobile advertising (Saadeghvaziri and Seyedjavadain, 2011; Van der Waldt et al., 2009).
Irritation has been studied as an emotional outcome (Van der Waldt et al. , 2009) or
a consumer reaction toward mobile advertising (Tripathi and Siddiqui, 2008; Xu et al.,
2009) but there is a lack of research on irritation as a direct antecedent of overall attitude
toward mobile advertising. Entertainment has been detected as a contributing factor to
attitude toward mobile advertising through perceived advertising value (Liu et al., 2012),
but little research has been undertaken to explore a direct path to attitude toward mobile
advertising and its effects on irritation.
Mobile advertising allows consumers to access advertising messages at their
convenience. When receiving mobile advertising messages, consumers can read them,
eliminate them or keep them in their inbox until they decide what to do with them. So,
factors leading to mobile advertising acceptance can be considered to play a key role in
mobile advertising success. While previous research on attitude towards mobile
advertising focused on innovation-based drivers (Bauer et al., 2005) or utilitarian
consumer-drivenfactors such as perceivedcontrol, trust or sacrifice(Merisavo et al., 2007),
little attention has been paid to the combined influence of affective and cognitive
antecedents of attitude and behaviour towards mobile advertising (Bauer et al.,2005;
Liu et al.,2012). For example, littleresearch has been done toknow how entertainment and
Teenagers’
advertising
acceptance
733
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