Consumer attitudes toward mobile advertising : A study of the Dutch youth.

Abstract: Purpose: To study the Dutch youth’s perceptions on and attitudes toward mobile advertising. Background: Consumers are living within a media saturated environment, which limits the effectiveness of advertising. This has led to advertising clutter, most prevalent in traditional mass media. The advertising clutter has resulted in marketers moving their advertising focus toward less cluttered mediums, such as mobile advertising. Mobile advertising allows companies to specifically target the right consumers by looking at age, gender and geographic regions etc. Being able to advertise to such a specified target group is an advantage for companies, however the question remaining is how consumers perceive this form of specific targeting advertising. Method: In this research the deductive approach has been implemented in order to answer the research questions. Both qualitative and quantitative data has been collected through a questionnaire and focus group. The statements used in the questionnaire are based on previous studies and theories. The data retrieved through the questionnaire has been analysed using SPSS. Conclusion: The results of this study showed the Dutch youth mainly sees the originality, interactivity and entertainment levels of mobile advertising as positive in comparison to traditional forms of advertising. Furthermore, message content was shown to be an important factor in order for the consumer to perceive the advertising as positive. The main aggravating attributes that come with mobile advertising are the perceived risks, like receiving too many advertising messages. Furthermore it was found that the more positive the attitude toward advertising in general is, and the more the consumer likes searching for product information, the more positive the attitude toward mobile advertising will be. The main purpose of this research was to find out what the attitudes of the Dutch youth are toward mobile advertising. The statistical results showed a negative attitude toward mobile advertising. However, the qualitative results showed that when mobile advertising is used in a proper way, consumers’ attitudes can be positive.