The role played by gender, household income and age in factors contributing to consumers’ attitudes towards short message service advertisements

Abstract

The exponential growth in the use of mobile phones has seen companies investing heavilyin mobile marketing to exploit the advertising opportunities presented by this medium. Thisstudy investigated the role that gender, household income and age play with regard to factorscontributing to the attitudes of consumers towards SMS advertisements. The contributingfactors reviewed in this study are content appeal, perceived personalisation, interactivity of SMSadvertisements, attitudes towards advertising in general, consumers’ innovativeness, perceivedconsumer knowledge, perceived control, fear of spamming, perceived incentives and locationbasedadvertising. A convenience sample was drawn from staff and students of three privateinstitutions of higher learning. The findings indicate that gender, household income and agetend to affect consumers’ attitudes towards SMS advertisements. More specifically, of all thecontributing factors, household income emerged as the most significant differentiator.