Abstract:
The exponential growth in the use of mobile phones has seen companies investing heavily
in mobile marketing to exploit the advertising opportunities presented by this medium. This
study investigated the role that gender, household income and age play with regard to factors
contributing to the attitudes of consumers towards SMS advertisements. The contributing
factors reviewed in this study are content appeal, perceived personalisation, interactivity of SMS
advertisements, attitudes towards advertising in general, consumers’ innovativeness, perceived
consumer knowledge, perceived control, fear of spamming, perceived incentives and locationbased
advertising. A convenience sample was drawn from staff and students of three private
institutions of higher learning. The findings indicate that gender, household income and age
tend to affect consumers’ attitudes towards SMS advertisements. More specifically, of all the
contributing factors, household income emerged as the most significant differentiator.
