Exploring the effects of gender, age, income and employment status on consumer response to mobile advertising campaigns

The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects gender, age, income and employment status on consumer response to short message service (SMS)‐oriented direct‐response requests or a call‐to‐action tactic in a television advertisement or program, consumer's participation in SMS sweepstakes or other competitions, and consumer uptake of mobile services such as ringtones, logos, screensavers and wallpapers ordered by SMS message.

The data used in this study were collected via an online survey. A total of 4,062 consumers responded to this survey. Cross‐tabulation and binary logistic regression were used to examine the associations between the explanatory variables and responses to mobile advertising campaigns.

The results suggest that women are more active than men in their responses to SMS call‐to‐action campaigns. In addition, the results indicate that mobile advertising is not only for teenagers. For instance, consumers in the 36‐45 age group were most likely to respond to SMS calls‐to‐action in a television program and participate in SMS sweepstakes and other competitions. However, the youngest consumers most actively ordered mobile services using SMS. In addition, it was found that employment status had a substantial impact on consumers' SMS campaign activity.

Self‐report survey data are the bases of the findings discussed in this article. Substantial evidence exists in previous research that many respondents are inaccurate in reporting their own attitudes and past behavior. Thus, additional research relying on, for instance, SMS delivery measures (e.g. number of messages sent, number of replies, and – where an identifiable offer is promoted via mobile phone – the exact purchase rates), should be executed. Such experiments go beyond consumer reports by providing useful estimations of the impact of SMS text advertising based on customer inquiry and actual behavior.

This study clearly demonstrates the prevalence of SMS advertising campaigns and provides important insights into consumers' engagement with SMS advertising activities. Basic demographics such as gender, age, income, and employment status are useful in modeling and predicting consumer behavior in relation to SMS call‐to‐action campaigns. Thus, the findings reported in this paper should help marketers to design campaigns that focus more closely on the target audience.

While building on and maintaining continuity with extant work, this paper provides results that do facilitate research efforts focused on mobile media and aid practitioners in their quest to achieve mobile advertising success.