FINNISH CONSUMERS WELCOME MOBILE MARKETING Recent study shows respondents buy products or services due to SMS offers

"PEAR is one of the leading mobile marketing academic research projects in the world and their work is significantly contributing to the industry’s understanding of what makes mobile marketing an effective marketing medium," said Michael Becker, CTO of iLoop Mobile (Michael Becker is also co-chair of the Mobile Marketing Association’s Academic Outreach Committee). "PEAR's research shows us that, when properly conceived and structured, mobile marketing can be an effective method to generate audience response, satisfaction, and sales. This and other studies conducted by PEAR researchers are invaluable to the future global growth and success of the mobile marketing industry."

This latest study also shows that SMS marketing, one method of mobile marketing, can be quite effective: around 10 percent of the respondents reported having bought a product or service due to a SMS offer. Respondents regarded maximum four text messages per week as the most suitable number of messages. In Finland, women seem to be more active in using SMS for mobile marketing purposes than males do. Specifically, women sent and receive more text messages, ordered more logos, ringtones and participate in SMS sweepstakes than men; whereas, males are more active in using SMS in relation to TV programs. Age seems to also impact mobile service usage, but larger differences exist only between the oldest age group and the younger ones.

The results are in line with many other global and national studies concerning the use of mobile services and experience with mobile marketing, however there were some unexpected findings as well. For instance, “what was surprising was that people seen to be more willing to receive mobile marketing from their mobile operator rather than from marketers,” notes the responsible director of the research, Heikki Karjaluoto, Research Professor, University of Oulu, Finland. “Future studies should closely consider this finding and attempt to determine if it is isolated to this study or if it is a more universally applicable finding.”

Additional papers and work will be derived from the study in the coming months.

About the PEAR and the Study
PEAR Personalized Mobile Advertising Services research project conducted an online survey of over 4000 people between 16-70 years of age, during the months of November-December 2005. The project is a part of FENIX -technology program at TEKES (the National Technology Agency of Finland). Research is conducted in co-operation with research institutes and several companies from Finland and abroad.

The PEAR project aims at developing a service system for customer relationship management in mobile context. The central objective of the project is to develop a multi-channel service system for planning, implementing and analyzing mobile marketing campaigns. The service system will utilize value added services such as personalization, user grouping, presence, profile, and location information.