Promotional marketing through mobile phone SMS: a cross-cultural examination of consumer acceptance

Abstract

This current study investigates a special effect of consumer behaviour -how store coupons, i.e. special discounts offered by retail stores, influence consumer behaviour. The scope of this research addresses the cross-cultural effect of consumer behavioural expectations by marketers. Based on a literature review and the theoretical basis of the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology (UTAUT2) model, we propose an extended theoretical model to examine cross-cultural effects on the dependent variable of behavioural intention to accept store coupons sent through mobile phone short messaging services (SMS). The study was conducted using consumers in Canada and Bangladesh. The final model, developed through a statistical analysis conducted by LISREL, identified that culture has a potential impact on consumer behaviour in this specific response-stimulus model. It also recognized that any specific consumer phenomenon, such as consumer acceptance of mobile phone-based promotional marketing through SMS, cannot be completely captured by the UTAUT2 model.

Integrated Cultural Theories on Mobile Marketing Acceptance: Literature Review

“…The cross-cul tural approach is used for research in many different fields of mobile marketing, e.g. SMS advertising (Muk & Chung, 2015;Kumar et al, 2016;Hernandez-Ortega et al, 2017), mobile applications (Pentina et al, 2016;Qin et al, 2018), mobile banking (Mor timer et al, 2015;Akhtar et al, 2019;Changchit et al, 2019;Merhi et al, 2019;), mobile commerce (Hung & Chou, 2014;Chen et al, 2021), mobile advertising Gao et al, 2013;Muralidharan et al, 2015;Liu et al, 2019), augmented reality (Jung et al, 2018;Castillo & Bigne, 2021), and other systems.…”

Under the sway of a mobile device during an in‐store shopping experience

“…After all, India differs from many other developing economies owing to its large population, diverse societal fabric with 2 official languages, 22 state languages, and hundreds of different dialects, and societal divisions based on religion, caste, communities, and tribes (Bhatia & Ritchie, ; Deshpande & Darity, ; Panda & Gupta, ). Some research suggests that consumers from culturally distinct countries behave differently (Craig & Douglas, ; Kumar et al., ). Therefore, empirical work is needed to uncover the role of AS in emerging economies and to discern what degree selling approaches utilized in developed economies can also be effective interculturally and in emerging economies.…”

“…Retailers are responding to this phenomenon by providing brand apps, responses to customers via social media, answers to questions and complaints on customer review sites, such as Trip Advisor, Yelp, and Angie's List (Webb & Roberts, ), text message promotions (Rettie, Grandcolas, & Deakins, ), mobile payment availability (Falk, Kunz, Schepers, & Mrozek, ), mobile coupons (Dickinger & Kleijnen, ), and location‐based services such as billing, advertising, retail store traffic, and navigation updates (Dhar & Varshney, ; Xu, Teo, Tan, & Agarwal, ). As such, marketers hope to target customers “with special offerings such as discount/benefit and interacting at a specific time and location” (Kumar, Akhter Shareef, Kumar, & Persaud, , p. 2).…”

Consumer usage of online travel reviews: Expanding the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology 2 model

“…Previous studies that have applied UTAUT2 in a consumer context have found SI to be significant in influencing users’ acceptance of new technology (e.g. Kumar et al, 2016; Macedo, 2017). Gupta et al (2018) and Morosan and DeFranco (2016) found SI to be significant in influencing travelers’ decision to use mobile applications for bookings and making online payments at hotels, respectively.…”