INBCT 4

 

The Role of Advertising in Mobile Banking Usage

Anssi Mattila, (E-mail: anmima@econ.jyu.fi, Phone +358-40-5302612), School of Business and Economics, P.O.Box 35/MaE, FIN40014 University of Jyvaskyla, Finland

 

 

Abstract

 

This study explores the effect of advertising on introducing mobile banking habit among Finnish consumers. The presented results are based on over 1200 survey responses collected during summer 2002 from three different mobile banking user segments: the non-users, the occasional users and the regular users. All the user groups are using some forms of electronic banking. We have also a comparative data from years 2000 and 2001, based on which we will demonstrate how the advertising effect has evolved over the last three years. Whereas in the beginning the role of advertising was miniscule, it has grown significantly over the last year or so, and more and more customers report advertising as their primary reason of starting to use mobile banking services. However, the internal factors seem to remain the final trigger in mobile banking usage instead of the external ones such as advertising.     

 

 

Introduction

            Rapid changes in the financial services environment; increased competition by new players from non-banking sector, product innovations, globalization and technological advancement, have led to a market situation where battle of customers is intense. As a consequence financial services providers have intensified advertising and started to offer services through various delivery channels besides traditional branch banking. Today’s knowledgeable consumers demand up-to-date, innovative services, thus the pressures banks face are twofold stemming from the competitive market environment and from customers’ needs (Polatoglu & Ekin 2001; Thornton & White 2001).

 

             

Summary of Selected Results

            The complete results will be presented in detail distributed among the different user groups and their psychological and demographical profiles in the final paper. Different kinds of statistical methods will be applied to ensure the reliability of the results. Four out of five consumers (79.8%) haven’t received advertising of any kind over their mobile phone in Finland. The age (r=0.049, p<0.001), marital status (r=-0.080, p<0.001), household income (r=0.073, p<0.05) and respondent’s line of business (r=-0.064, p<0.05) are correlated with the willingness to receive ads over the mobile phone. None of the user segments examined were willing to receive for example bank’s collaborating firms.

 

According to our ANOVA test, the younger consumers are more willing to receive ads over the mobile phone. Among the non-users, advertising seems to be the leading source of information (36.4%) in terms of mobile banking services. Among the occasional users, advertising comes on the 4^th position (15.7%) as an importance of information sources. From the regular users, 14.7 percent inform advertising as their primary reason of starting to use mobile banking services.