Abstract:

The discovery of the mobile phone by marketers as a nascent advertising medium has fast gained acceptance amongst old and potential marketers. As a result of the devices’ acceptance and engagement as a communication platform, it has been described as one of the highest contributors of personal data. Although this medium has shown enormous ability in granting the marketer maximum consumer reach, and provision of personalized solution to identified marketing problems, its acceptance, perception and engagement level amongst consumers have been appalling. Hence, the acceptance, perception and engagement of the mobile phone as a marketing medium were examined. The quantitative research approach was adopted for this study where a survey was conducted within a scientific selection of students of Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta (FUNAAB), Nigeria. Results indicated that respondents were aware of telecommunication’s application of short codes for mobile marketing, however, a larger percentage had a negative inclination towards their mobile phones being used as a marketing medium, thus, minimal engagement on the part of the respondents. It was further deduced that if respondents were to be favorably inclined to telecommunications’ mobile marketing strategy, permission from the customers, incentives to the customers and message relevance to the customers should be key drivers to the application of the strategy. These, consequently formed the bases of recommendation proffered in this study.