Exploring the Mobile Consumer

The use of personal mobile and wireless devices as a medium for communicating with and delivering value to consumers, a new marketing venue often labeled “mobile marketing,” has recently become a rapidly growing practice. Many industry analysts agree that the notion of one-to-one marketing is now a more realistic vision due to the rise of mobile marketing (hereafter, m-marketing). Accordingly, several global brands including Coca-Cola, Disney, BMW, McDonald’s, Adidas, Nestle, Visa, and MTV are currently implementing m-marketing programs in order to benefit from its unique features. Madvertising revenue has reached to US$4,957 million in 2008, and is projected to exceed US$16 billion within the next 3-4 years (eMarketer, 2007). The present chapter focuses on consumer responses to m-marketing applications. Extant research on the consumer side of m-marketing appears to be highly scattered and fragmented. One of the purposes of the chapter is to present this literature in an organized framework. The consumer behavior discipline has a well established body of knowledge which includes a pool of cognitive and affective constructs that influence behavioral outcomes. Prior research about mobile consumers has focused primarily on these frameworks in exABSTRACT