SMS Advertising and Life Style Relation

Abstract

The paper highlights the relation between attitudes toward SMS Advertising and lifestyles of the consumers. It is argued that consumer attitudes, which are affected by the attributes of SMS advertising, are also in a significant correlation with consumers' lifestyles. The rapid advance in mobile communication technologies make the companies update their marketing strategies in the direction of this advance and transfoimed mobile phones into a new advertising channel. SMS advertising, which is still frequently referenced as a mobile advertising application by companies, became an indispensable part of their advertising campaigns with its several advantages. In order to increase the efficiency of marketing plans, first there is a need to explore customers' attitudes toward SMS advertising. In the literature, it is seen that consumer attitudes toward SMS advertising was mostly explained by demographic variables. However, respondents' lifestyles which is another valuable consumer information resource, is also thought as a variable in order to explain consumers' attitudes toward this advertising way. In this pilot research, a public survey was conducted with 497 mobile phone users in Istanbul, Turkey and hypothesis was tested by using related statistical analysis. The results of the survey indicate that consumers generally have negative attitudes toward SMS advertising and there is a direct significant relation between attitudes and their lifestyles.