Why young consumers are not open to mobile marketing communication

Abstract

This paper explores young people's motivations for using mobile phones. Older adolescents' everyday use of traditional and new forms of mediated communication were explored in the context of their everyday lives, with data generated from self-completion questionnaires, diaries and mini focus groups. The findings confirm the universal appeal of mobile phones to a youth audience. Social and entertainment-related motivations dominated, while information and commercially orientated contact were less appealing. While marketers are excited by the reach and possibilities for personalisation offered by mobile phones, young people associated commercial appropriation of this medium with irritation, intrusion and mistrust. In other words, while marketers celebrated mobile phones as a 'brand in the hand' of youth markets, young people themselves valued their mobiles as a 'friend in the hand'. This suggests that the way forward for mobile marketing communications is not seeking or pretending to be young consumers' friend, but rather offering content that helps them maintain or develop the personal friendships that matter to them. About the authorsIan Grant is Senior Lecturer in Marketing at the University of Strathclyde. He has recently been researching the differences in how young consumers use traditional and new forms of media, and the implications for marketing practice. This research spans his interests in digital communications, lifestyle and media consumption. As a former advertising planner, Ian has also published on advertising planning, strategy and consumption.

Assessing the influence of motivations and attitude on mobile social networking use

“…The final scale for use motivations was the result of (1) adaptation of previous scales on uses and gratifications in the area of mobile telephony (Grant and O'Donohoe 2007;Leung and Wei 2000;Ö zcan and Kocak 2003;Wei et al 2010) and (2) several focus groups that analysed user mobile social networking behaviour. Participants were adolescents, all smartphone owners, with different levels of familiarity with data services.…”

“…These problems or limitations have been gradually overcome and the approach has become one of the most influential theories in the study of communication. This theory has been applied to interactive media such as the Internet (Eighmey 1997;Eighmey and McCord 1998;Parker and Plank 2000;Stafford et al 2004) and the mobile phone (Grant and O'Donohoe 2007;Leung and Wei 2000;Ö zcan and Kocak 2003;Wei et al 2010).…”

“…Many studies regard these young people as digital natives because technology is an essential determinant of who they are and what they are like (Conecta 2011). We also focused our research on teenagers because mobile phones are essential to many youth lifestyles and it has been noted that the improved capabilities of mobile phones as personal and portable multimedia devices have led mobile phones to become indispensable to young consumers, attracting marketers' attention (Grant and O'Donohoe 2007). Mobile phones have become integrated into young people's everyday lives and are used to connect and synchronise peer networks (Oksman and Raitiainen 2001;Skog 2002).…”

Consumer acceptance of mobile marketing communications using the QR code

“…12 In the mobile communication era, the uses and gratifications theory remains relevant to explain consumer adoption of internet-and mobile-based media services. 12,15,16,19,20 Extant studies on this theory have identified that utilitarian gratifiers pertain to perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use, 12,19 whereas non-utilitarian gratifiers focus on the entertainment value of mobile media. 12,16 QR code applications demonstrate that retailers utilize the code to offer consumers more enjoyable shopping experience (non-utilitarian) as well as shopping information and convenience (utilitarian) via mobile phones.…”

“…13 Many consumers consider shopping as an integral part of everyday life 14 and mobile phones as devices they use daily. 15 Previous studies evidenced that both non-utilitarian and utilitarian aspects of using mobile technologies are likely to influence consumer adoption decisions. 12,16 Examples of QR code marketing communications in the retail environment offer both utilitarian and non-utilitarian benefits to consumers.…”