Factors Affecting Consumers' intention To accept mobile Advertising in Sudan

Ilham H. F. Mansour
Abstract
Marketing experts consider the mobile device as an extremely promising marketing tool as it supports them to cope with their major challenge: getting time and attention from customers. Mobile advertising holds strong promises to become the most highly targeted advertising medium offering new ways to target messages to users. By utilizing mobile advertising, companies can run marketing campaigns targeted to tens of thousands of people with a fraction of the costs and time compared to other direct marketing mediums. In order to examine the influencing factors of consumer behaviors in the context of mobile advertising, the study investigates the factors that induce consumers to accept the mobile phone as a means of communicating promotional content. The empirical results validate the Theory of Reasoned Action model confirming the links between attitude-intention, social influence-intention, and identify perceived usefulness as the strongest motive of acceptance of the mobile phone as an innovative medium for advertising content communication. The effect of perceived usefulness on attitude was greater than the effect of the other proposed factors, namely innovativeness, attitude towards advertising in general and subjective norms which were positively and significantly related to attitude toward mobile advertising

Keywords: Mobile advertising; Theory of Reasoned Action, Consumers' Acceptance, Behavior Intention.

1-Introduction:
There are currently many different ways of marketing communications by which marketers can reach their target audience. Options include traditional media such as broadcast media (television, radio), print media (newspaper & magazines), outdoors media (billboards & posters) and recently embraced electronic media (internet and mobile). Mobile advertising i.e. sending commercial messaging SMS or MMS to mobile devices is a brand new phenomenon as a channel for advertising and have many new features and, therefore, opportunities in comparison with traditional media. Although mobile advertising is carried out mainly using SMS at present, the near future may bring the use of mobile internet and WAP advertisement which combine the voice, text, graphics and music to represent an additional attraction for using mobile advertising. The increasing use of mobile phones has created a new opportunity for precision marketing. According to cellular-news report 2010 penetration of mobile communication devices reached very high rates in most countries around the world, Sudan is no exception, with a penetration rates reached 47%, (Sudan Telecommunications Report Q2 2011). In addition, SMS (Short Message Service) text messaging, which is of particular importance to this study, is increasingly being used as a means of communication. According to Africa Investor report annual worldwide SMS traffic volumes rose to nearly 6.6 trillion in 2010. The high penetration of mobile phones and text messaging combined with the low cost of text messaging make this an interesting medium for precision marketing. The high global penetration of mobile communication devices is only one indicator of the high potential of mobile marketing. Moreover, the specific characteristics of the mobile phone allow for marketing measures not realizable by the use of other media. A mobile phone is rarely used by any other person than its owner. It is thus always attributable to one single person allowing for highly personalized marketing measures. Furthermore, the SIM (Subscriber Identity Module) card allows for the exact identification of each mobile phone and its user. The mobile phone therefore appears to be the ideal flexible and ready medium for direct and personalized customer communication. The purpose of this study is to identify the important factors that could determine the customers' acceptance of receiving advertising messages in their mobile devices and to develop a model that explains consumers' intentions to use mobile advertising in Sudan. The importance of this study centers on the need to increase the understanding of the important factors that could influence the adoption and usage of mobile advertising in Sudan. Hence, this study represents the first attempt to identify the factors that may affect mobile marketing adoption. The study is, therefore, undertaken with the primary aim of identifying, examining and providing an understanding of the factors that could explain the attitude behavior toward using mobile advertising. The remaining part of this paper is organized as follows: section II provides the literature review. Section III describes the research framework and hypothesis. Section IV presents the analysis and results of the study, section V provides the implications of the research and finally, section VI presents the study limitation and direction to future research.

2-Literature Review:Many factors could affect the success and effectiveness of mobile marketing. In order to succeed, mobile marketing, like any new technology, should first be accepted by consumers. Therefore, acceptance research has provided important insights in explaining the success or failure of new products or services being determined not only by their adoption but also by their continuous use thereafter. The communication of advertising content over mobile media can only be effective if consumers permit the continuous reception of advertising messages on their mobile phone. Behavioral intention has been considered as an indication of an individual's readiness to perform a given behavior. It is assumed to be an immediate antecedent of behavior (Ajzen, 2002) and it is affected by consumer attitude. Attitude is defined as a predisposition or a tendency to respond positively or negatively towards a certain idea, object, person, or situation, and it influences an individual's choice of action, and response to challenges, incentives, and rewards. Many studies have been conducted concerning consumers' intentions to adopt mobile advertising. Among the earliest studies is the study by Tsang et al (2004) who investigated consumer attitudes toward mobile advertising and the relationship between attitude and behavior in Finland. The results showed that consumers generally have negative attitudes toward mobile advertising unless they have specifically consented to it, and there is a direct relationship between consumer attitudes and consumer behavior. Entertainment was the most significant of the factors affecting respondents attitudes, followed by credibility and irritation. Attitude was positively related to the intention to receive mobile ads. Intention was affected by the incentive associated with the advertising. The respondents were more willing to accept incentive-based mobile advertising. Finally, intention significantly affected how and when the respondents read the message. Bauer et al (2005) investigated the factors that induced consumers to accept the mobile phone as a medium of communicating promotional content. The empirical results identified entertainment value as well as information value as the strongest drivers of the acceptance of the mobile phone as an innovative medium for advertising content communication. Another result of Bauer's study is that risk perception negatively determines the attitude toward mobile marketing. Risk perception in the context of mobile marketing mainly results from the fear of data misuse and the reception of unwanted mobile marketing messages Leppaniemi & Karjaluoto (2005) investigated factors that influence the acceptance of mobile advertising from both industrys and consumers points of view in Finland. Based on a review of previous studies in the field, the authors proposed a conceptual model of consumers willingness to accept mobile advertising. The model indicated that consumers willingness to receive mobile advertisements to handsets is mainly driven by four factors: the role of mobile medium in marketing mix, development of technology, one-to-one marketing medium and regulatory Lee (2006) examined the influencing factors of consumer behavior in the context of mobile advertising in Taiwan. The first stage of the study evaluated the correlation between consumer motives for receiving mobile advertising and their attitude toward mobile advertising. It also investigated the relationship between consumer intentions for receiving advertisements on their cellular phones and their subsequent actions once the mobile advertising was received. The second stage of the research validated Fishbein and Ajzens Theory of Reasoned Action model. It was found that positive actions on the received advertisements were significantly influenced

by strong intentions; strong intentions were influenced significantly by favorable attitudes, and favorable attitudes were significantly influenced by strong motives. Karjaluoto et al (2007) conceptualized and tested a theoretical framework that investigates customers intention to engage in permission based mobile marketing communications with a firm in the hospitality sector in Finland. The model proposed that perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use and perceived trust affect attitude toward advertising, which in turn, together with perceived behavioral control over mobile communications and reference group influence, affect intention to engage in permission-based mobile communications with a firm. Attitude was found to explain a considerable amount of the intention to receive messages from a firm. Waldt & Brown (2009) focused on determining the perceptions of the South African younger consumer segment towards SMS advertisements. It was found that consumers perceptions of the entertainment value, informativeness and credibility of SMS advertisements were positively correlated to consumers overall attitude towards SMS advertisements. The study further found consumers perceptions of the irritation aspect of SMS advertisements negatively correlate with consumers attitudes towards SMS advertisements. Consumers had generally negative overall attitudes towards SMS advertisements and thus it must be cautiously used when attempting to gain the attention of a younger segment of consumers Suher & Ispir (2009) investigated factors that affect consumer attitude toward SMS advertising in Turkey and the relations between attitude and the assumed indicators. The empirical data showed four factors as important for attitude toward SMS advertising in Turkey: Information entertainment, Life partner, Privacy, and Irritation. Keshtgary& Khajehpour (2011) investigated the factors influencing consumer attitude toward mobile advertising and the relationship between their attitudes and behaviors in Iran. The results indicated that Iranians generally do not negative attitude toward mobile advertising, but they prefer prior permission. The results also showed that among the four aspects of feature advertising (Entertainment, Informativeness, Irritation and Credibility); Entertainment had the most important role in consumer's attitudes toward mobile advertising.

3-Research framework and Research hypotheses:Since mobile marketing is still in an early stage of commercial deployment in Sudan, most consumers have not yet had the chance to adopt and use it as an innovation. Thus, it is not possible to empirically measure the adoption and use acceptance; consequently, as it is typical in these scenarios, the overall acceptance should be forecasted by measuring the attitude and intentions toward acceptance. Therefore, for this research, the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA), which is often used to explain behavior of the adoption of technology, will be the base of the proposed model used to study the intentions of Sudanese to adopt mobile marketing to identify factors that predict the adoption of new mobile services that may be empirically tested. Originally developed by Fishbein & Ajzen (1975), the Theory of Reasoned Action postulates that intentions are shaped through attitudes and social norms which in turn shape or even dictate an individuals behavior. TRA is a general well-researched intention model that has been applied extensively in predicting and explaining behavior across many domains and virtually any human behavior (Bauer et al 2005, Lee 2006, Nysveen 2003). In addition, TRA has been used to predict different behaviors (Sheppard et al, 1988). Consequently, the theory of reasoned action is one of the most influential theories of wide range

of human behavior (Vekantesh et al 2003). It suggests that attitude toward behavior and subjective norms will determine intention to perform behavior.Therefore, it will be behavioral intention, rather than attitudes, that will determine actual behavior. TRA has two core constructs (main determinants) of intention: attitude toward behavior (ATB) and subjective norms (SN) associated with that behavior (Figure 1). The attitude toward the behavior (ATB) is the previous attitude of a person toward performing that behavior Figure 1: The Theory of Reasoned Action

Behavioral Beliefs & Outcome Evaluations

Attitude towards the Behavior

Intention to Behave

Actual Behavior

Normative Beliefs & Motivation to Comply

Subjective Norms

Based on the existing literature about attitudes toward advertising and consumer behavior models, a research framework is constructed to illustrate the factors affecting consumer attitudes toward mobile marketing (SMS-based advertisements) and the relationships among attitudes, intention to view mobile ads, and users actual behavior. Attitude, intention, and behavior are three major variables in the theory of (TRA) as proposed by Fishbein and Ajzen in the early 1970s. The model links individual beliefs, attitudes, intentions, and behavior to describe the psychological process that mediates the observed relations between attitudes and behavior (Fishbien & Ajzen 1975). The direct effect of beliefs on behavioral intention is not included in the TRA.
Theproposedresearchmodelcomprisedtwoimportanttypesofvariables:

Six core constructs (independent variables) are: personal innovation (IN), Existing Knowledge (EK), Perceived Utility (PU), Attitude toward advertising (ATA), Perceived Risk (PR) and social Norms (SN). These core constructs are expected to influence attitude toward mobile advertising which in turn influence behavior intention.

Two dependent variables are attitude toward mobile advertising (the first dependent variable) which is expected to influence behavior intention of accepting mobile advertising (the late dependent variable)

TheconceptualmodelbasedonthetheoryofReasonedActiondisplayedinfigure2showsthe causallinksmainlyestablishedbypreviousstudiesconcerningtechnologyacceptanceanduse.

Innovativeness
H1

Existing Knowledge
H2

Attitude towards Advertising in General Perceived Usefulness

H3 H4 H5

Attitude towards Mobile Advertising

H8

Behavior Intention
H7 H6

Perceived Risk

Subjective norms Permission &Control

Figure 2: A Conceptual Model of Consumer Inten ons to Accept Mobile Adver sing

To operationalize the above model the following hypotheses of the effects on the consumers' attitude and intention to adopt mobile advertising are stated and will be tested empirically in this study:

H1: Personal innovativeness positively influences the attitude toward mobile marketing.
Personal Innovativeness is defined as the willingness of an individual to try out any new technology. Leung and Wei (1998) reported that consumer innovativeness is positively related to their adoption decision of various technologies. Innovative individuals have also been found to be dynamic, communicative, curious, venturesome, and stimulationseeking. Other diffusion studies also confirmed that innovativeness is related to consumer adoption behavior.

H2: The Existing knowledge about mobile communications positively influences the attitude
toward mobile marketing. Existing knowledge is determined by the ability to understand the features and usage of an innovation. Existing knowledge thus affects the consumers perception of the innovations complexity. The innovation is perceived to be easy and less complex if the consumer already

possesses a certain amount of knowledge about the innovation itself or about a similar product. In this case, the knowledge relevant to reducing the perceived complexity of mobile marketing is the knowledge about mobile communications. Mobile communications technology provides the technological basis for mobile marketing. The more familiar a consumer is with mobile communications in general the less difficult the use of mobile marketing services will appear to him.

H3: The attitude toward advertising in general positively influences the attitude toward mobile
marketing. Attitude toward advertising in general can be defined as "a learned predisposition to respond in the consistently favorable or unfavorable manner to advertising in general" (Lutz, 1985). There is a strong relationship between the attitude toward advertising in general and the attitude toward mobile marketing. Both attitudes are related: mobile marketing can be considered as a subset of all available instruments for communicating advertising content. Consumers are likely to be highly familiar with advertising in general, as they are exposed to it on an everyday basis. Consequently, they can be expected to hold a stable and consistent attitude toward advertising in general. Mobile marketing on the other hand is to be classified as an innovation, to which only few consumers have yet been exposed. Consumers attitudes toward mobile marketing can thus be assumed to be less stable and easily changeable. The attitude toward mobile marketing has a lower resistance to change than the attitude toward advertising in general.

H4: The perceived usefulness of mobile marketing positively influences consumer attitude
towards mobile marketing. Perceived usefulness is the degree to which a person believes that using a particular system would enhance his or her job performance. (Rao, 2007). That is, potential adopters assess the consequences of their adoption behavior based on the ongoing desirability of usefulness derived from the innovation. According to Kaas (1990), a consumer perceives the advertising stimuli if its marginal utility exceeds the marginal utility that results from using an additional time unit to engage in an alternative activity. This implies that a consumers attitude toward mobile marketing will be more positive the higher he perceives the utility of this marketing service.

H5: Perceived Risk of mobile marketing negatively influences consumer's attitude toward mobile marketing. Perceived Risk: the risk associated with mobile marketing is mainly perceived as one of data security. New media services users tend to have concerns about data manipulation, unauthorized data access, and unwanted tracking of usage patterns. Another security issue concerns consumers privacy. By using mobile medium, it is possible for marketers to reach consumers anytime and anywhere. H6: Permission and control of mobile marketing negatively influences attitude toward mobile
marketing. Permission and control: Many studies found that most of the consumers would like to know more about what and how companies collect and use their personal data; thus, they are more

willing to receive the message from companies that they have authorized to use their personal information and where they can control when to opt-in to and opt-out from the marketing programs (Drossos et al., 2003; Sullivan Mort and Drennan, 2002).

H7: subjective norms concerning the adoption of mobile marketing positively influence
behavioral intention to adopt mobile marketing. Subjective norms are defined as the persons perception that most people who are important to him think he should or should not perform the behavior in question (Fishbein & Ajzen 1975). Subjective norms are intended to account for social influences that the persons behavior is exposed to. Thus, performing a particular behavior is also influenced by others opinions about the behavior.

H8: Attitude toward mobile marketing positively influences consumer behavioral intention to
adopt mobile marketing. Attitude towards Mobile Advertising is defined as an individuals positive or negative feelings about accepting mobile advertising, an implicit, drive-producing response considered socially significant in the individual's society. This definition states that attitude is an implicit response with drive strength which occurs within the individual as a reaction to stimulus patterns and which affects subsequent overt responses. TRA postulates that attitude toward behavior and subjective norms will determine intention to perform behavior.

4-Analysis &Results :-

The Sample
To investigate consumer's willingness to receive SMS advertisements, a sample of 251 mobile users is used to test the theoretical model and related hypotheses. The original sample comprised 365 mobile users who were randomly targeted from the community in Khartoum, the capital of the Sudan. Out of the 365 distributed questionnaires, 265 (73%) were returned. Of which 14 (4%) were excluded from the analysis because of the large number of missing fields. Therefore, in the final count 251 of the returned questionnaires (69% of the original sample) are subjected to the required statistical analysis that needs to be conducted in order to achieve the objectives of this research. The Sample demographics of the study are shown in Table 1

Table( 1) Sample Demographic Characteristics

N Gender Male Female Age group 18-25 26-35 108 143 125 74 % 43 57 50 29

36-45 45+ Education level General Secondary Undergraduate Graduate Occupation Student Employee Self employed Laborer Household Status Single Married Other
N=251

37 15 12 12 174 53 131 93 4 3 20 179 62 10

15 6 5 5 69 21 52 37 2 1 8 71 25 4

Reliability and validity of Variables:

The first logical step in the empirical analysis is to test for reliability and internal consistency of the data and to determine the degree of usability in further statistical analysis. Table 2 displays the reliability and internal consistency of the data collected through the questionnaire instrument. Cronbachs alpha is the most widely used for assessing the reliability of the entire scale. The Cronbach's alpha for the whole set of items is .79; each of the seven literature predetermined factors has reliability higher than 0.65, indicating highly reliable measurement scale. This means that all scales can be reliably used in this research.

Table( 2 ) Reliability Measures 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Variable Perceived Utility (3 items) Innovativeness (3 items) Subjective Norms ( 3items) Existing Knowledge (2 items) Attitude To Advertising (2 items) Permission & Control (2items) Perceived Risk (2 items) Attitude Towards Mobile advertising (2items) .75 .73 .73 .65 .65 .74 .73 .90

9.

Behavior Intention (3items) Overall set (26 items)

.80 .79

As Cronbach's alpha measures how well items in a set are positively correlated to one another, it is clearly evident from Table (2) that the reliability coefficients of the instruments set (as reflected by Cronbach's alpha); with an overall alpha of .8 for all the items have high reliability. The perceived utility questions show the highest reliability measure (=.75), while questions relating to existing knowledge, (EK) and attitude towards mobile advertising (ATMA) have the lowest reliability as alpha is at .65 in both sets. The group of questions relating to the other four sets show very close alphas: for Innovativeness questions ( = .73), for Subjective norms questions ( = .73), for Perceived risk questions = .72, and for Control questions (=.74). In order to test discriminant and convergent validity of the measured constructs in the model, 21 items (independent variables) were used to carry out a factor analysis. The five items measuring the attitude and intention (questions 22,23,24,25 and 26) were not used in the factor analysis as they represent the dependent variables in the study. Table 3 lists all the extracted factors and factors loadings

Table (3) Principal Component Analysis for all Measurement Items (Varimax Rotation)
Ques Item . Q1 IN1 Q2 IN2. Q3 IN3 Q4 EK1 Q5 EK2 Q6 EK3 Q7 ATA1 Q8 ATA2 Q9 PUinf Q10 PUinf Q14 PUCU 1 2 .79 6 .76 9 .73 7 .68 6 .79 1 757 .77 4 .76 4 .763 .705 .718 3 4 5 6 7 c .6 9 .6 5 .6 0 .5 6 .6 8 .6 6 .6 3 .6 8 .6 7 .6 0 .6 M 2. 7 2. 7 3. 6 3. 7 3. 2 2. 9 4. 2 4. 0 3. 8 3. 8 3. S D 1. 2 1. 1 1. 2 1. 1 1. 1 1. 1 .8 5 1. 0 1. 1 1. 1 1.

S Q15 PR1 Q16 Q17 Q18 Q19 SN1 Q20 SN2 Q21 SN3 M % 0f Variance Cumulative % 3.7 22.4 5 22.5 3.0 9.9 9 32. 5 PR2 PRprm t PRcon t .65 0 .79 2 .79 9 3.3 8.4 5 40. 9 .85 9 .88 0 .87 1 .81 8

0 .7 9 .7 2 .7 9 .8 0 .5 7 .7 5 .6 7

5 4. 1 3. 9 3. 7 4. 1 3. 1 3. 4 3. 5

1 1. 1 1. 2 1. 1 1. 0 1. 2 1. 1 1. 6

3.3 7.0 6 49. 9

4.1 6.4 2 54. 4

3.9 5.1 4 59. 6

4.0 4.8 4 64. 4

Principal component analysis for all items measuring attitude towards mobile advertising and intention to use it (varimax rotation) - factor analysis 1. Values below .5 suppressed C= Cronbach's alpha, M= Means, SD=Standard Deviation.

The results in Table 3 indicate that the model explains 64.4% of the variance in attitude towards mobile advertising. These observations indicate that the explanatory power of the adoption models is good when compared to other studies (Nysveen 2003) To test appropriateness of factor analysis, this paper uses Bartlett's Test of Sphericity and Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO). Bartlett's test of Sphericity is a chi-square test of determinant of the correlation matrix and assumes that the variables are nonlinear. For this study Bartlett's Test is .750 with (2 =1441.85, df=210, sig.= .000) indicating that the sample used in this study for factor analysis is adequate. KMO (measure of sampling adequacy) quantifies the degree of inter-correlations among variables, using a scale of 0 to 1, with values less than 0.5 deemed unacceptable. The KMO measure for the correlation matrix for this study is (.8). Thus, both tests clearly show the suitability of the sample and the performed factor analysis. Test of the research model: The research model was tested using linear regression analysis. Eight hypotheses have been tested and the results are summarized in Figure 3. Most of the hypotheses have been supported; mainly hypothesis H1, H3, H4, H6, H7& H8, but the other remaining hypotheses H2, H5, and H6 are not supported.

Figure 3. Results of Regression Model Testing

Perceived Usefulness Innovativeness Existing Knowledge
Attitude towards Advertising in General .45 .19 .06 .20 . 07 .41

R2 =.45 R2 =.45
Attitude towards .37 Mobile Advertising

.59

R2 =.35 R2 =.35
Behavior Intention

Perceived Risk Control Subjective norms

-------------

R = 67, Significant Relationships R square = .45 F = 27.849 (.000) * * Non Significant Relationships Significant at all level, N=251

-------------

Significant Relationships Non Significant Relationships

It is clear that the results in Figure 3 confirm the previous findings of the factor analysis, with the multiple regression models having an overall ability to statistically explain 45% of the variation in the attitude toward mobile advertising. This is reflected in the high and significant F statistic which is significant at all levels of significance (F=27.849, p < .000). The data clearly shows that five factors are found to be significant while the other three factors are not significant. The Perceived Utility (PU), Subjective Norms (SN), innovationess (IN), and Attitude Towards Advertising in general (ATA) influence the attitude towards mobile advertising positively (R2 =.45) as they are all highly significant factors (at all levels of significance) in explaining the variation in the dependent variable, Attitude towards Mobile advertising (ATMA). The other three variables; existing knowledge(EK) together with perceived risk (PR) and control(CNT), although having the assumed negative sign, are not significant, with perceived risk showing the least significance (t= .378, and P value = .706). The empirical results support the Theory of Reasoned Action confirming the links between attitude-intention and social influence-intention (R2 =.35). This proves the validity of the Theory of Reasoned Action for research in the area of mobile marketing especially in a developing country such as the Sudan. Most of the variables proposed in the model and their relationships were found to be relevant in this study. The main findings indicate, in line with several technology acceptance studies (Bauer et al, 2005; Nysveen et al, 2005) , that the perceived usefulness (PU) of mobile marketing is the main driver of consumer attitudes toward behavioral intentions to receive messages. The effect of PU on attitude was greater than the effect of the other proposed factors, namely innovativeness, attitude towards advertising in general, and subjective norms.

5-Implications of the Research Findings:

Theoretical implications:
o Thisresearchhasproved,usingadevelopingcountrysample,thevalidityofthetheory ofreasonedactionforresearchintheareaofmobilemarketingandcontributestothe literatureonconsumerattitudesandintentionstowardmobilemarketinginseveral ways.Theresultsunderscoretheimportanceofperceivedusefulnessofcommunication asthemainfactorofconsumerattitudestowardadvertising.Intheliterature,perceived usefulnesshasbeenfoundtoexplainaconsiderableamountofvarianceofattitudeand inten on(Davisetal,1989;Davis&Venkatesh1996;Gefen&Straub2000),andthatits effectistypicallystrongerthantheeffectofotherconstructs.Theempiricalresultsalso implythatsocialnormsonlyhaveaslightdirectinfluenceonbehavioralintention,but areastrongindirectdeterminantviapersonalattitudetowardstheact.Theresearch foundnoempiricalsupportforasignificantinfluenceoftwoconstructs"Existing knowledgeaboutmobilecommunications"and"perceivedRisk"ontheattitudetoward mobilemarketing.Theseresultscontributetothetheoryofreasonedactionby confirmingthelinksbetweenattitudeintention,referencegroupinfluenceintention andintentionuse. Managerial Implications: o Theimplicationsofthefindingsandconclusionsare:companiesneedtoplayaleading andactiveroleininfluencingtheperceptions,andtherebytheattitudesandbehaviorof currentandpotentialmobileusers.Theoutcomesofthisstudyhavetwopractical implicationsformarketersandorganizationsventuringintomarketinginSudanand similardevelopingcountries. o First,theresearchprovidesageneralguide,onuserbehaviorintention,formarketing managersinorganizationsbeforetheymakemajorinvestmentsinnewtechnology.The resultsunderlinetheimportanceofpreciselyembodyingmobilemarketingmessages andcampaignsaccordingtoconsumerutilityandinformationrequirements.Onlyif mobilemarketingmessagesaredesignedcreativelyandareuseful,oriftheyprovidea highinformationvalue,willconsumersdevelopapositiveattitudetowardsmobile marketingleadingtothebehavioralintentiontousemobilemarketingservices. o Second,thisstudyservesasatoolforunderstandinguseracceptanceofmobile marketingapplicationssuchasSMS.Morespecifically,theresearchhasproduceda

validatedinstrumenttomeasuretheacceptanceofthemobilemarketingapplications currentlyinplace.Thefindingshaveimplicationsforanticipatingfutureuserproblems anddeterminingwaystoimproveuseracceptanceandusage,aswellasdetermining whythetechnologyisbeingused. Riskperceptioninthecontextofmobilemarketingmainlyresultsfromthefearofdatamisuse andthereceptionofunwantedmobilemarketingmessages.Clearly,theestablishmentofawell foundedbasisoftrustformobilemarketingasagenericformofmarketingcommunicationhas tobeamajorgoalforalladvertisingcompanies.Thisistheprimeprerequisiteforconsumers willingnesstopermitthereceptionofadvertisingmessagesontheirmobilephonesandto providepersonaldataforthepersonalizationofthosemessages.Thus,itisaprerequisiteforthe consumeracceptanceofmobilemarketing.

6-Study limitations and Directions to Future Research:

This research has examined the consumer perception and acceptance of mobile marketing which is still in an embryonic stage of commercial deployment in Sudan, where most consumers have not yet had the chance to adopt and use it as an innovation. Thus, future research is needed to empirically measure adoption and use of mobile marketing after its actual use. In this research, mobile marketing has been limited to Short Message Service (SMS), as it is the only medium of mobile advertising used in Sudan. There are other interesting research avenues beside the SMS to pursue. Moreover, the area of mobile marketing is huge and within it exist a variety of mobile advertising tools. Therefore, it is recommended that future research provides specific examination of new advance advertising tools such as multimedia, for example. Further research is also needed on the concept of permission marketing. Although this concept appears to be a prime prerequisite for mobile marketing acceptance, the ideal way of implementing this idea needs to be identified. Research in this context should reveal how consumers prefer to provide permission and profile information. The area of viral marketing in the mobile space is very interesting. More research is needed into what influences make a campaign viral. Some indications pointed that the mobile media is great for making a campaign viral [Barwise et al., 2001].

Finally, The key findings from this research together with the mobile advertising acceptance model generated, should provide valuable information not only at the industry level in Sudan but also at the national level, and may be applied to other similar countries as well.

References:
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4. Drossos D. An Empirical Assessment of Factors that Influence the Effectiveness of SMS Advertising Proceedings of the 40th Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2007 5. Fishbein, M., and Ajzen, I. Belief, Attitude, Intention and Behavior: An Introduction to Theory and Research, Addison-Wesley Publishing Company, Reading, MA, 1975. 6. Haghirian et al "Mobile Advertising in Different Stages of Development : A CrossCountry Comparison of Consumer Attitudes" Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences - 2008 7. Heikki Karjaluoto; Heikki Lehto; Matti Leppniemi; Chanaka Jayawardhena Customers Intention to Engage in Permission based Mobile Marketing Empirical Communications 2007 8. Kesti, Manne Tracking Consumer Intentions T0 Use Mobile Services: Evidencefrom A Field Trial in Finland 2004 9. Su-Fang Lee An Empirical Examination of Customer Perceptions of Mobile Advertising, Information Resources Management Journal, Volume 19, Issue 4, 2006 10. Leppniemi, M. & Karjaluoto, H. & Salo, J. & Sinisalo, J. Factors Affecting Customers Willingness to Receive Mobile Marketing. Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA), Saarbruecken, Germany, 2005. pp.249-253. 11. Manochehri & AlHinai "Mobile-Phone Users' Attitudes Towards Mobile Commerce & Services in the Gulf Cooperation Council Countries: Case Study". 978-1-4244-16721/08/$25.00 2008 IEEE. 12. Ville., Salmenkivi, Sami., Raulas, Mika., and Leppniemi, Matti. An Empirical Study of the Drivers of Consumers Acceptance of Mobile advertising. Journal of Interactive Advertising; Spring 2007, 7 (2), 1-18. 13. Nysveen H., Pedersen P.E. and Thorbornsen H., "Intention (2005b) 33(3), 330-346 14. Nysveen H., Pedersen P.E. and Thorbornsen H., "Explaining Intention to Use Mobile Chat Services: Moderating Effects of Gender", Journal of consumer Marketing, (2005a) 22 (5), p.247-256 To Use Mobile Services: Antecedents and Cross-service Comparison, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science

15. Suher & Ispir , "SMS Advertising In Turkey: Factors Affecting Consumer Attitudes" Seluk niversitesi Sosyal Bilimler Enstits Dergisi, 2009 16. Melody M. Tsang, Shu-Chun Ho, and Ting-Peng Liang Consumer Attitudes Toward Mobile Advertising: An Empirical Study International Journal of Electronic Commerce / Spring 2004, Vol. 8, No. 3, pp. 6578. Internet Sources: 1. Arab Advisor : http://www.arabadvisor.com, accessed May 2011 2. International Telecommunication Union report :http:// www.itu.int 3. http://www.cellularnews.com/search/index.php 4. h p://pdf.marketpublishers.com/61/sudan_telecommunica ons_report_q3_2011.pdf accessedmay2011.

Answers to Referee Report: Key words are added in the abstract Hypothesis testing formulation were matched with Figure 2 Table 1 source is Sudan Telecommunications Report Q2 2011, this Table is now removed to shorten the introduction section. This study used factor analysis because the primary objective is to isolate the factors that are responsible for a set of observed responses (attitude and intention). Therefore, the three items measuring the (attitude towards mobile advertising and Behavior Intention to use mobile marketing) (questions 22,23,24,25 and 26) were not used in the factor analysis as they represent the dependent variables in the study. According to the theory of reasoned action behavior (B) is determined by behavioral intention (BI). The behavioral intention is in turn postulated to be a function of the individuals attitude toward the act (ATT) and the social norms (SN). Therefore, SN is considered as an independent variable for its direct effect on BI and treated similar to the other model independent variables in the factor analysis (see table 3 & 4) or the regression analysis testing (Figure 2). The paper

is restructured to reflect the conceptual framework. Figure 1 explains the position of social norms as part of TRA. Although the referee's reference to Baron & Kelly approach is valid if taken within a context of the mediating role of attitude, this study is based on TRA (see Pages 7-9) to develop a model to predict and explain consumers behavior and not intended to test such relationship. The mediating effects of beliefs on intention through attitude are well established in TRA and other acceptance theories such as TAM and TPB. Thus, this paper is limited to the indirect effect of those beliefs (independent variables) on intention behavior mediated by attitude as hypothized by Ajzen & Fishbein (1980). However, recent studies (Nysveen 2005) found that the model including the indirect effects of the independent variables on intention through attitude showed significantly better fit than a model not including those effects. This lends more support the mediating role of the attitude on intention as hypnotized by TRA. Research limitations and directions to future research are added The introduction section has been shortened significantly Spelling mistakes are fixed.