Factors Affecting the Acceptance of Mobile Marketing: Role of Ethics and Permission-based Marketing

Abstract

Presently, each individual is annoyed by the short messaging service received from various companies about their services without our consent. How many of them are relevant to us? How many attract our attention? This ethical dilemma is problematic for individuals that involve complex and often conflicting principles of ethical behavior. Thus, this study examines the role of ethical and permission-based mobile marketing to measure this phenomenon of unethical sharing of promotional SMS to the customer. The five independent variables; ethics, trust, perceived control, actual control, perceived utility, and one dependent variable as acceptance of the mobile advertisement is deployed. We used 7 points Likert scale questionnaire and distributed it among 150 mobile phone users to empirically test the hypothesis through STATA 14.2. The empirical results of the study present that ethics and trust have a significant relationship with the acceptance of mobile marketing. Interestingly, the actual control of SMS received presents a less significant impact as compared to the perceived control on the acceptance of mobile marketing. The findings of the study hold very useful information for marketers to develop an effective, efficient and selective marketing strategy rather than push marketing tactics to attract more customers by providing them appropriate, informative, attractive, and trustworthy information.