What is SMS advertising and why do multinationals adopt it? Answers from an empirical study in European markets

This is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Journal of Business Research. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Journal of Business Research 61.1 (2008) DOI http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2006.05.003This study examines the factors associated with the intention of multinational corporations operating in Europe to implement SMS advertising. It hypothesizes that managerial intentions to use thismedium are related to the perceptions of four factors: (1) the ability to build brand image; (2) the ability to use location based marketing; (3) the perceptions of how well consumers accept SMS advertising; and (4) the perceptions of the technological infrastructure. Results support the notion that managers from the European Union, Japan, and the United States will be more likely to adopt SMS advertising if they perceive it has the ability to help build the brand. They are also likely to perceive information security as a threat to the ability to “push” the product through the wireless channel. Results also suggest that managers give significant weight to the penetration of the technological infrastructure needed to run the ads through SMS based messaging service