Introduction

Under the guidance of its expert Editor and an eminent international Editorial Board, Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing has developed into one of the world's leading forums for the latest thinking, techniques and developments on the measurement, analysis and targeting of marketing activities. Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing has established itself as a key bridge between applied academic research and commercial best practice, globally.

News

Mobile Marketing - A 'taster' of the Special issue (16/1) from the Journal's Managing Editor, Jonathan Reynolds

This special issue of the Journal of Targeting, Measurement and Analysis for Marketing is devoted entirely to measurement issues in relation to mobile marketing.

The growing dependency of consumers worldwide on their mobile phones and other portable devices continues to highlight the enormous potential of the mobile channel for marketing purposes. The number of mobile connections exceeds the population in a growing number of markets, driven by the ownership of multiple SIM cards. There is increasing substitution of mobile for fixed line services, alongside a growth of non-SMS mobile data services and mobile Internet driven by the mass market availability of 3G data services.

Michael Becker's opinion piece provides a useful starting point in reminding us that the evaluation of marketing effectiveness is dependent upon good data: not just in relation, for example, to handset capability, but also alongside actual consumer adoption of particular handset functions: "consumers actually report using very few features of their phones". Indeed, understanding the way increasingly complex devices are employed by consumers is challenging. Hannu Verkasalo's paper reports on an extensive empirical study of mobile service usage in Finland, focusing on smartphones with extensive functionality. A handset-based approach to research, using a downloadable research client to track usage, does appear to allow distinctive end-user segments to be identified.

Many of the papers within this special issue are deliberately selected from outside the immediate Anglo-American marketing bubble. For example, Süleyman Barutçu maps the generic models of the B2C mobile experience onto the Turkish consumer and finds some interesting differences that are not just linked to different levels of adoption.

Not only within emerging markets, but also within mature mobile environments, SMS remains an enormously important mobile communications tool. However behaviours between even mature markets are very varied and Alexander Muk's paper examines whether cultural differences between countries (specifically the US and Taiwan) have a significant impact on consumers' adoption of SMS advertising.

The special issue also addresses the growing importance of SMS for political marketing purposes; and Irene Prete reviews the effectiveness of these campaigns and exposes some very interesting data.

The use of mobile coupons to stimulate sales and loyalty amongst consumers has experienced a lot of false starts, and in a careful review of the take-up of different forms of mobile couponing in Japan, Fumiyo Kondo and his colleagues point out that the mobile marketer has to work much harder to counter the intangible nature of such offers than for convention coupons: prospective users are simply more likely to forget they have received them, unless prompted!

One way around this is to ensure the delivery of marketing communications in appropriate contexts. Jens Hosbond and Mikael Skov discuss the potential that location-based services have to generate more relevant communications which render them more acceptable to consumers.

Finally, the continuing extent of innovation within the mobile marketing environment provides the basis of a contribution from Lieven de Marez and his colleagues, which seeks to identify innovation-prone consumers' adoption processes - in this case, of mobile news and mobile TV services. They conclude that what they term new 'mobile communication paths' will need to become available to communicate those messages more efficiently.

Access the Special Issue