ABSTRACT
Since the first text message was sent from a computer to a mobile phone in the UK in 1992, the mobile communication medium has been growing at an astonishing pace (Michael & Salter, 2006). In 2010, the penetration of third generation (3G) mobile devices increased to almost 35% in most of the 8G countries. Japan is ranked at the top with 87%, followed by South Korea (71%), and Australia (50%) (Morgan Stanley, 2009). As a result, an increasing number of both global and local firms incorporate the mobile device as part of their marketing mix, and use a diverse range of its functionalities. Of these, mobile advertising is the earliest and most visible marketing tool. The main objective of mobile advertising is to generate or support new customer acquisition. This includes both “push” communications initiated by the marketer, and “pull” communications initiated by the consumer, in response to either a “push” communication or a perceived consumer need. Push advertising is usually sent via Short Message Service (SMS) or Multimedia Message Service (MMS), while pull advertising places advertisements on a website, banner, display, search, or applications (Barnes, 2002). Mobile advertising spending in all formats is projected to reach $3.5 billion in 2010 and $5.55 billion in 2012, in Western Europe (SFN, 2010). In the US, the compound annual growth rate is predicted to be 37.3% between 2008 and 2013, with total spending jumping from $320 million to $1.56 billion (eMarket, 2010). As higher-capacity 3G technologies have boosted consumer demand for more sophisticated applications, mobile advertising has received increasing attention as a teaching subject. This seems to be a natural move, given the increasing interest in online social media and new technology adoption. However, educational materials related to mobile advertising are surprisingly scarce. The objective of this chapter is to move one step forward, by providing a comprehensive state of the art on mobile advertising theories. Such a resource is indispensable for understanding theory and its application to mobile
advertising and teaching mobile advertising courses at the university level, since theories play a vital role in connecting new media with our existing knowledge. In particular, there has been an explicitly stated need to conceptualize the ubiquity concept, which is a core benefit of a mobile device. Ubiquity has been conceptualized as flexibility in time and space, but a thorough theoretical explor ation has not yet been conducted. However, parallel to interactivity in the more traditional “wired” Internet, ubiquity seems to hold the key to responding to an unanswered question: why does mobile advertising have a potentially greater reach, regardless of time and location? In this light, this chapter considers “advertising contexts” as shown in Figure 1.1 of Chapter 1, although here the notion of “context” may differ considerably from other media. In mobile-based communication, “context” refers to both the physical and social environments, which can be paraphrased as “situation” (Belk, 1975). Mobile media is a personalization tool that fits a range of situational variables so that the applications needed are available at any time, and any place. Although the actual practice of mobile advertising goes far beyond the academic literature, it is our hope that scholarly work will develop meaningful theories to explain how and why this ubiquitous personalization would work. The remainder of the chapter is structured as follows. First, a brief overview of earlier mobile advertising research is presented. Then, based on systematic article selection criteria, a critical review of the existing literature is performed, and it identifies the major theoretical frameworks used in prior research, and the gaps to be filled. In closing, we suggest future research directions.
