Integrating Mobile Marketing into the Marketing Communication: Exemplification of Mobile Marketing Campaigns

With the increasing growth and sophistication of mobile communications, companies integrate the mobile channel into their marketing communication and campaigns. Companies are able to execute very different and creative mobile marketing campaigns by using a wide range of mobile platforms such as Wireless Application Protocol (WAP), Short Message Service (SMS), and Multimedia Message Service (MMS). The purpose of this chapter is to review and exemplify the concepts, objectives, strategies and promotional tactics associated with mobile marketing campaigns; so that the review of relevant literature and exemplification of mobile marketing campaigns provide an insight into the nature of mobile marketing campaigns

Supporting Marketing Practices: Mobile Network Operators' Value Added Services Changing the Way of Doing Business

The concept of mobile communication has been rapidly changing all over the world and the Global System for Mobile communication (GSM) business has been evolving from voice services to value added services (VAS). The rapid growth in mobile technology enables Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) to provide a wide range of VAS to their corporate customers and these VAS change and transform companies' way of doing business. The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the corporate VAS of a MNO, which has gained global acceptance and recognition, as a case study in order to understand how the mobile communication changes the companies' way of doing business. The key supporting mobile technologies, services and solutions, which are provided by the case company to its corporate customers, are reviewed in order to comprehend the mobile technologies, practices, and devices that support mobile business (m-business) and mobile marketing (m-marketing) applications

Determining the Role of Communication and Distribution Channels for Organic Foods

While, the market for organic foods is growing; the proportion of consumers who buy organic foods is still considered low. The role of communication activities is very important for promoting the organic food consumption. In order to create awareness and generate demand for organic foods, companies need to use effective communication tools. Companies in the agribusiness sector try to take advantage of the information and communication technologies in the digital era with the purpose of communicating the value of their offer to consumers. Companies need to know which information sources (channels) are most influential in purchase decision while communicating with consumers. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine consumers' credibility perceptions of communication channels that are used to promote organic food. The great majority of the respondentsin this study mentioned that they had never seen organic food ads. However, a significant number of consumers who had seen organic food ads declared Internet as the medium they had exposed to organic food ads. Nevertheless, our study revealed that the respondents did not perceive Internet as a credible source of information about organic foods. Yet, online social networks were perceived as more reliable source of information about organic foods when compared to majority of traditional media such as radio and newspaper ads. The distribution channels that consumers prefer to purchase organic foods was also investigated; and it is found that a significant portion of the consumers choose supermarkets and neighborhood bazaars for their organic food shopping whereas Internet/online shops and pharmacy stores were shown as the least preferred shopping alternatives. Finally, a substantial majority of the consumers mentioned high prices and availability as the main barriers against buying organic foods

Investigation of the Relationship Between Objective Social Status and Subjective Social Status

It is expected that subjective social status, where consumers position themselves on the social status ladder, behaves similar to the composite indicator of objective social status and the three factors that constitute it (occupation, income, education). In this context, the aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between subjective social status and objective social status. In order to determine the relationship between the social status of consumers, a survey study was conducted on 954 people. According to the results of the analysis, a positive relationship was found between subjective social status and objective social status. The relationship between objective social status and subjective social status, has a stronger correlation than subjective social status has with education, income and occupation. In addition, it was shown that men, married people and older than 30 have a higher socioeconomic status than women, single and younger people, respectively. Finally, there is a similarity between objective social status and subjective social status. Nonetheless, due to the nature of subjective social status, which takes into account past experience and future expectations, it can be seen that subjective social status can provide more realistic and meaningful information when used in conjunction with objective social status

Technology Is Transforming Shopping Behavior: In-Store Mobile Technology Usage

The advancement of information communication technologies has been creating new opportunities for the retailers and shaping the retail landscape. The mobile device is always with shoppers and it is one of the biggest influencers of in-store shopping behavior. Technology is changing our traditional concept of in-store shopping behavior. The main purpose of this study is to discover how consumers are using mobile devices throughout their purchase journey in the store from an emerging country perspective. A survey was conducted with 593 respondents from Turkey and the findings of this study indicate the importance of in-store mobile phone usage and the high level of acceptance of this trend. In-store mobile phone usage phenomenon referred here as a "trend" will soon become an inevitable life style for whole consumers in this age of technological developments. And this new life style may either be an opportunity or an obstacle for traditional brick and mortar retailers depending on their response towards in-store technology usage

Consumers' and Physicians' Perceptions about High Tech Wearable Health Products

As the growing aged-population and increasing chronic diseases lead to ongoing changes in healthcare industry, wearable technologies have been becoming a hot topic in the field of health technology. Mobile health applications that work with wearable technologies enable users gather and store all health and fitness related data in one place. Consumers' acceptance, adoption and usage intention of wearable health products is expected to rise in the near future. This paper aims to reveal the perceptions of users as well as physicians about high tech wearable health technologies. The study will provide a deeper insight about motivations that affect individual's decision to adopt high tech wearable health technologies by extending technology acceptance model (TAM). Perceived risk and compatibility constructs are integrated into the TAM to analyze what determines users and physicians acceptance of wearable health technologies. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd

The effects of status consumption and conspicuous consumption on perceived symbolic status

This study aims to propose and test a framework for status consumption in the context of perceived symbolic status. This paper fills the gap in the literature by proposing an integrated model focusing on the drivers and consequences of status consumption, conspicuous consumption, and symbolic status. We conducted an online survey among 990 people, and we tested the structural path relationships using AMOS. The results show that, first, status consumption and conspicuous consumption relate to perceived symbolic status. Second, the product symbolic status of the self relates to the product symbolic status of others. Third, the average product symbolic status of the self is higher than the average of the product symbolic status of others. Finally, when consumers are susceptible to normative interpersonal influences, they are more susceptible to status consumption and conspicuous consumption. Thus, consumers have a higher tendency to attribute the symbolic status of self to product and brand use than others. The implications of these findings are expected to make a contribution to the literature and lead to a better understanding of brand differentiation, positioning, and advertising decisions

Effect of brand credibility and innovation on customer based brand equity and overall brand equity in Turkey: An investigation of GSM operators

Today, challenging and intense global competition conditions have led to the transformation of local and small markets into larger and more developed markets. For this reason, firms have had to make different strategic decisions in order to survive and profit. If firms want to challenge the competitors one way is to increase their brand equity. The main purpose of this research is the effect of brand credibility and innovation on customer based brand equity and overall brand equity in the context of three GSM operators in Turkey. The sample for the study is limited to 589 participants. The data was collected between 31th of May and 7th of June 2018. A convenience sampling process was used to collect data for this research and 589 pieces of data were collected through a questionnaire survey. Correlation and regression tests were performed to examine the relationship and effect between variables in the study. Regression analyses were employed with the purpose of revealing the effect of brand credibility and innovation on customer based brand equity, its dimensions and overall brand equity. The results of the analyses indicated that brand credibility and innovation had positive effect on customer based brand equity as well as its dimensions. Since there is no literature on the effect of credibility and innovation on both customer based brand equity dimensions and overall brand equity in a holistic approach in the GSM sector in Turkey, this paper aims to contribute to this gap