The study of peoples attitude and response toward receiving sms advertising Mozhgan Ahmadi 1, Gholam Ali Masrour 2 and Mansour Khaksar 1 1 Department of Business Management, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, IRAN 2 Department of Business Management, Islamic Azad University, Sanandaj, IRAN Abstract Information and communication technology, has provided a cheap and effective scope for advertisement executives of which cell phone messages can be mentioned. One of marketing scopes which has remained, to some extent, unknown is the subject of advertisement through cell phones. For this reason, in this paper, we have tried to deal with the investigation of consumers attitude and response toward receiving and messages.the statistic population is the Sanandaj Azad university students. The sampling method is random. The results show that cell phone users have positive views on ad messages. Being amusing, bearing information, reliability is of the effective factors on users attitude toward receiving ad messages. Key words: advertisements, attitude, attitudes toward advertisements, message ads, behavior. Introduction Commercial advertisements have, for a long time, been a way to present thoughts, scientific and expert views in terms of various economic, cultural, social points of view. Some people have praised them and used them with no hesitation introducing them as effective tools on adjusting free economy, however, some have rejected them and deem them a factor for authority of capitalism, a tool which draws people to consume more and being sunk in unreal requirements. In contemporary era, these two attitudes play prevailing views in theoretical scope of commercial advertisement. But in practical scope, today s world has taken action to commercial advertisement and considers it an inevitable use the way that all kinds of written and non-written media with advanced up-dated technologies serve as an environment to publish these types of advertisements (Dindar farkoush & Heidar beigi,2011). Regarding to raising the tendency of many manufacturing and service companies to advertisements as the vital base of marketing as well as rising the number of advertising companies, a big deal of capital has recently been drawn to this industry. The way that companies and organizations spend tens of billions rials of their own limited sources advertising their goods and services. Phone message, from among many different advertising media, have been focused by advertising and manufacturing companies due to increasing the number of cell phone users in the country (Azizi, & Derakhshan,2009). Advertisement can make critical changes in peoples value, beliefs. behavior and sale patterns as an important social event and also can change consumers lives (Usman et.al,2010). Attitude toward advertising It refers to the ones interest in reacting positively or negatively to advertisement stimulus. Which is affected by the situational conditions in which the one is exposed to advertisements? The determinants of the attitudes toward advertisements are as follow: Evaluating the way an advertisement is performed The mood and the sense occurred by advertisements The scale which ignites the viewers excitement The viewers situation: being tired or depressed, being fresh, being in position of eating etc. (Nikoo-maram & Sarabadani,2011) COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 242
The attitude for advertisement is affecting the consumers shopping intention and their visual background about a brand (Heidarzadeh et.al,2009). If the final purpose of advertisements is to make a positive attitude toward them and trade mark, an increase in shopping potentiality or a positive feeling response to an advertisement can be the best factor of advertisement effectiveness evaluation. Many studies show that a positive feeling response to an advertisement is in a direct and positive relation to recognize a trade mark and customers shopping goals. It appears that when customers would like an advertisement, they probably like the advertised trade mark as well, therefore would be more interested in buying that trade mark (Abasi & Mohammadian,2007). Attitude toward sms advertisements Generally, the following factors affect the users attitudes toward sms advertisements: o Entertainment The entertaining feeling caused by advertisements has a vast effect on the users attitude. The entertaining services can increase the customers loyalty and mark value for them. Since most of people have sense of humor, providing games and rewards by sms cause them to have a high participation. Receiving rewards and games by users is a successful way to attract the customers. These characteristics can deeply involve the customers and familiarize them with more advertising services and products. o Informativeness Information quality has a direct effect on the consumers perception from the company and its products. The information received by cell phones must have qualitative features like relevance, timeliness and usability for the consumers drawing the consumers attention to their suitable information. Information can be taken into account as a valuable stimulus in cell phone marketing because the receivers show positive response to them. Therefore, consequently, informativeness of such ad messages has a positive effect on the consumers attitude toward advertisement (Chowdhury et.al,2006). o Credibility The advertisement credibility comes from the consumers perception from their righteousness generally. The ad credibility is influenced by various factors particularly the firm credit and the messenger. It is expected that the messages delivered by cell phones can be effective to the consumers attitude toward advertisements. o Irritation Advertisements have a vast effect on peoples attitude. The advertisements are deemed irritative when are used the way they irritate or insult the consumers. The cell phone ads can provide the consumers with information which make them indecisive and upset. The consumers may have an indecisive feeling about the advertisements and show negative responses to them. Thus we can conclude that the vague and incomprehensible messages can have a negative effect on attitude to the advertisements (Chowdhury et.al,2006). COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 243
Research Framework Features of advertising messages Entertainment Informativeness Attitude toward sms advertising Source: Tsang et.al, 2004 Behavior Credibility Irritation The research hypothesis o The users attitude toward the ad messages is generally positive o The ad messages are entertaining from the view point of the studied sample o The ad messages are considered informative regarding to the examined sample o The ad messages are credible with respect to the tested sample o The ad messages not irritation regarding to the examined sample o Over half of the users pay attention to the ad messages and read them thoroughly The research methodology The present research is descriptive regarding to the method, practical regarding to the result and goal, cross-sectional regarding to the method of data collection Sampling and sample volume assessment The statistic population of the present paper is the student s studding at Sanandaj Azad University Who was announced 11883 people at the time of the research. The statistic sample volume was determined 372 with respect to the kokrans statistic sample volume. Regarding to the sample volume and in order to collect data, the students were distributed 400 questionnaires randomly of which 330 questionnaires were responded and used in the analysis. The research data collection tools The data collection tool in the present paper is questionnaire. This questionnaire consists of two parts. The first part consists of the respondents cognitive data e.g.: age, sex, education, marital status. As well as a question to know what a user uses sms for most. In the second part, Tsang et.al questionnaire (2004) was used to assess the users attitude and behavior. The questions pointing method in this research questionnaire is based on the likerts 5-option range. The users positive attitude with 7 questions, their negative attitude with 3 questions and their behavior with 2 questions were assessed. Validity and reliability of questionnaire In this paper, a commonly used standard questionnaire has been used whose credit has been confirmed to measure the questionnaires constancy; the kronbakh alpha method has been used for 30 sample questionnaires as pre-test. The kronbakh alpha coefficient was calculated 0.876 which indicates its constancy and credibility. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 244
Data analysis method Various statistic methods have been used to analysis the data resulted from the questionnaire for this reason, the soft ware spss- has been applied in both descriptive and perceptive statistics. In the descriptive part, the descriptive statistic methods such as frequency distribution tables, histogram graph, average central index. In the perceptive statistic part, the 2- sentence test, freedman grade test and kydo test have been applied. The data analysis results -The respondents demography characteristics In the descriptive analysis of the research data, the frequency distribution of sex, age and marital status was discussed and its results are as follow: In terms of sex, 52.7% of the respondents were males and 47.3% were females. In terms of marital status, 21% were married and 79%were unmarried. In terms of age, 10.9% were under the age of 20, 79.4% were 21-30, 6.7%were 31-40 and 3% were over the age of 40. In terms of education, 12.1% were the students studying associate degree, 77.6% B.A, 19.4% M.A and 0.9% PH.D. - The research hypothesis test The tow-sentence test results show the confirmation of the main hypothesis which means the users attitude toward receiving the ad messages is positive. According to the results, 92% of respondents responded positive attitude to the ad messages. The positive attitude point was over average (3) equals 3.91 showing the users positive attitude toward the ad messages. Cassini (2003) reported a very positive attitude to the phone advertisements. This result is the same as the Ellis et.al (2007) findings on the students 18-24 years old. Their research results showed that the respondents generally had pleasant feelings toward the ads through SMS. The jing-jang ZU research findings, however, show on the contrary. Based on their research, the respondents general attitudes toward the ad messages were, to some extent, negative. The Siyavash and Abedins research results (2009) also show that 75.5% of the respondents have positive attitudes to the ad messages. Also Tasag et.al (2004) showed that the consumers have negative attitudes to the ad messages. The results from subordinate hypothesis confirm this hypothesis. The obtained averages for being entertaining, informative, not being irritative and being credible were 3.82, 3.91, 4.38 and 3.97 respectively. These amounts are mostly of the average level (3) hence, the whole subordinate hypothesis have been confirmed. e.g., the ad messages are entertaining reliable and informative from the respondents view, moreover they are not irritation as they think. The analysis results show that the assumption, over half of users pay attention to the ad messages and read it thoroughly has been confirmed. In Ellis et.al study (2007) only 55% of SMS receivers take time to read them and 39.3% read them and then delete them. On the other hand, the in pocket study (2002) showed that 94% of respondents read the whole received SMS. These are the results from investigating the respondents responses to the ad messages: 20% delete them as soon as they receive it 54.5% pay attention to them and read it completely 21.2% save them if interesting 4.2% send them to their friend if interesting The freedman results on the priority of the effective factors on the users attitudes toward receiving the ad messages show that not being irritative messages ranks first, COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 245
being reliable second, and being informative and entertaining also place in the third and fourth respectably as respondent regard. The practical recommendations The mobile phone marketers and operators can save the personal information of volunteer consumers by producers and marketers in the data base and encourage people to attend to negotiations It is recommended to consider the variety principle in advertisements and stop repeating a message Consumers can also used these messages in making their marketing decision if the messages are personalized Informing and drawing people trust to the ad messages, here, for each firm a certain code can be defined which is accessible for customers and drew their trust Founding a special data base in a firm to log the customer s characteristics, interests and requests in order to send right messages for certain people. In other words, personalizing messages can be helpful for market managers and company owners. COPY RIGHT 2013 Institute of Interdisciplinary Business Research 246
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