AN OVERVIEW OF MOBILE MARKETING IN INDIA

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1 ABSTRACT AN OVERVIEW OF MOBILE MARKETING IN INDIA SHREEKUMAR MENON*; DR.THANKHAM GHULE** *Assistant Professor, Smt. MMK College, Bandra. **Principal, M.D College, Parel. Mobile phone is an important modern day communication device. It is a device that has revolutionized communication between the people. The growth of mobile phones is one of the indicators of its resounding acceptance and need among the people in the various countries. China has maximum number of mobile phone subscribers followed by India, besides used for communicating it has evolved into a useful marketing device. Marketing through mobile phone has slowly begun to catch marketers fancy and has become a sure way of promoting products to the final users, the paper is an attempt to study the future of mobile marketing in India. INTRODUCTION Pinnacle Research Journals 33 Modern marketing is all about customer creation and customer retention, creating and retaining the customer is not only a necessity but is the future of any business entity,popularizing the company s offering among the target audience is the object of any business undertaking,this can be done through various media and tools in marketing,traditional tools like television, audio has been supplemented by modern day innovations like internet marketing, mobile marketing and other modern tools of communication. Mobile marketing has been the latest to join the bandwagon of popular media of reaching the target audience Mobile subscribers in the developed world has reached saturation point with at least one cell phone subscription per person. Market growth is being driven by demand from developing world, led by rapid mobile adoption in China and India, the world's most populous nations, number of worldwide mobile subscribers will reach 5.9 billion by 2013, reports Infonetics Research. Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has revealed that the country's mobile subscriber base has increased from million in December 2011 to million in January Telecom operators added 9.88 million mobile subscribers in January 2012.Total wireless subscriber base Increased from million in May2012 to million at the end of June 2012, registering a growth of 0.51%.The enormous subscriber base in India itself shows the potential of mobile phones to become the game changers in the marketing segment. Alex Michael and Ben Slater (2007) has defined mobile advertising as use of mobile medium as a communication and entertainment channel between and end user they have identified certain advantages of mobile marketing over its traditional media like

2 Response rate being over 10% Cheapest form of communication with end users Requires minimum external efforts to initiate a pilot etc. Kaan Varnali, Ays egül Toker (2010) discussion identified several areas requiring future research. Specifically, researcher attention is relatively low in the domains of trust, m- satisfaction, m-loyalty and public policy. According to them the concept is still vague and in its infancy, more study need to done on the subject to understand it from a broader perspective. according to a study by Mind Commerce brands that get into mobile in the next year will become a catalyst for mass-consumer adoption of mobile marketing and commerce, The study shows that the world market for mobile marketing and advertising is projected to reach $50 billion by 2014, up from $29 billion currently, representing an annual growth rate of 12 percent. Michael Becker, EVP, Business Development, iloop Mobile, Inc. opies that Mobile marketing is an emerging and important marketing practice, one that can generate demonstrable results. In can be used to inform, entertain, generate loyalty and provide care. It can be used to exchange value not just in one direction, but both directions between the marketer and the consumer. Global expenditure on mobile ads is forecast to double every year to US$20.6 billion in 2015, according to Gartner* (June, 2012), from an estimated $3.3 billion in Brand spending on mobile advertising will grow from 0.5 percent of the total advertising budget in 2010 to over 4 percent in Asia will continue to dominate global mobile ad spend, but to a lessening degree from 49.2 percent of mobile ad revenue in 2011 to 33.6 percent in Pinnacle Research Journals 34 Strategy Analytics (April 2012): Advertiser expenditure on mobile media is expected to almost double from US$6.3 billion in 2011 to $11.6 billion in The US is expected to be the fastest growing mobile ad market with a $4.2 billion spend in In the US revenue from in-app advertising exceeds revenue from mobile Web display. ABI Research (June 2011): Global expenditure on mobile advertising is forecast to exceed US$7 billion in 2012 and by 2016 $24 billion will be spent on mobile advertising (which is the same amount as is spent on online advertising in 2011). *Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company Mobile Advertising Revenue by Region, Worldwide, (Millions of Dollars), according to Gartner.

3 Region (Projected) North America ,791.4 Western Europe ,131.9 Asia/Pacific Japan and , ,925.0 Total 1, , ,610.0 Source: Gartner (2011) From the above chart we can clearly note Asia to be a major player in mobile Advertising revenue, reason is sheer size of the market and healthy growth in the Asian market, Asian mobile customer base is growing at a tremendous pace and this is a potential gold mine for marketers to reach mass audience MOBILE MARKETING IN INDIA According to Gartner Mobile services revenue in India is projected to grow around 18 percent a year, hitting US$37 billion by 2012, The growth will come from a rapidly proliferating rural market, low handset costs and lower tariffs, India's mobile subscriber base is also set to exceed 737 million connections by 2012, growing around 21 percent annually. India will continue to be the second largest wireless market after China in terms of mobile connections. Mobile data traffic in India increased by 54 per cent between December 2011 and June That's according to Nokia Siemens Networks, based on data culled from its 2G and 3G networks in the country, which representing around 30 per cent of the market. Pinnacle Research Journals 35 And it predicts that India s mobile data consumption will double by June Over the six month period, data traffic generated by 3G services has increased by 78 per cent, with 2G services increasing by 47 per cent during the same period. The flood of users in the Indian mobile space has been matched by an influx in mobile advertising. As the market has matured and the entire ecosystem improved, mobile advertising has skyrocketed. Brands and marketers recognize the power of mobile and wide-scale infrastructure improvements forecast a bright future for the industry. The market is particularly promising for SMS advertising as feature phones still vastly outnumber smart phones. In fact, 88% of all mobile ad impressions were delivered on advanced feature phones. The TRAI data also shows that 25% of all Indians have participated in an SMS contest and SMS conversion rates have been much higher than more traditional channels such as television or radio.

4 REASONS FOR SLOW GROWTH OF MOBILE ADVERTISING IN INDIA The main reason for marketers to hold back is the lack of awareness. The understanding about the medium is less and people think that mobile advertising means SMS advertising. One of the major barriers in India is the adoption of smart phones. Low-end feature phones do not give the superior user experience that smart phones can provide to end user. In India, majority users use mobile phones as the only mode of connectivity. It is more in the urban areas that it is used in conjunction with other devices SUGGESTIONS Make handsets more affordable for India's rural masses. Phones having Android and other suitable operating system should be made available at economical cost to rural users. Operators should share infrastructure to lower the cost of services. Encourage people to use mobile phone for making payments and other value based services to be offered to consumers to ensure they use phone for variety uses other than for making calls. Educating people on concept of mobile based marketing by sending out a highly targeted campaign to prospects. Utilize mobile marketing to remind customers of the Big event like off seasons sale, new offers in offing s. This will remind your customers that you have something big going on that they should check out. Pinnacle Research Journals 36 Develop mobile applications free of cost to your customers that would help them to purchase your products online REFERENCES BOOKS Michael and Ben Slater (2007). Mobile Marketing-Achieving competitive advantage through wireless technology, Butterworth-Heinemann, an imprint of Elsevier,Oxford,Uk. Kaan Varnali, Ays egül Toker (2010) Mobile marketing research: The-state-of-the-art International Journal of Information Management, pp WEBSITES

5 News mobithinking.com/mobile-marketing-tools/latest-mobile-stats/c Pinnacle Research Journals 37