Outlining a New Approach to Study Mobile Marketing

Abstract

Mobile Marketing is a relatively new field. Many articles attempt to understand, define, encapsulate, find best practices, and describe use applications on devices. A significant part of the research on and advertising focuses on the technology or functionality perspective, i.e., QR Codes, MMS and SMS, APPS, and Smart Tags/Proximity technology implementations, User Interface, and Payments to name a few. Researchers try to understand how consumers' attitudes are formed and influenced by Mobile Marketing, in many cases using models that studied technology acceptance (TAM, UTAUT, etc.). The authors contend that there is a critical misconception in the study of Mobile Marketing. It is argued here that different from extant research, in the context of mobile marketing is not a technology, it is a medium. That medium can be highly customized, even considered as a one to one conversation. Consequently, different from current research, it is claimed here that consumer intention, acceptance, and redemption of offers are affected directly not by technological, situational, or contextual factors, but through a primary mediating construct: Relevancy or Agent R. Drawing concepts from the Relevance Theory we offer a new perspective on how to study the effects of advertising on consumer behavior; opening a new field of study, that will focus on how to enhance the Agent R construct. We theorize that previously studied factors that affect consumer's behavior are antecedents of the Agent R and that without relevancy all those factors are immaterial. This change of paradigm on the investigation of advertising will have direct practical consequences too. The Holy Grail of marketers will be to find ways to win the relevance game, enhancing immediate customer value and improving return on advertising expenditures.