The influence of repetition and time pressure on effectiveness of mobile advertising messages

Telematics and Informatics 31 (2014) 463–476

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Telematics and Informatics journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tele

The influence of repetition and time pressure on effectiveness of mobile advertising messages Pei-Luen Patrick Rau a,⇑, Jia Zhou b, Duye Chen a, Ta-Ping Lu c a

Department of Industrial Engineering, Tsinghua University, Beijing 100084, China Department of Industrial Engineering, Chongqing University c Department of Industrial Engineering and Management, National Taipei University of Technology b

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 7 March 2013 Accepted 27 October 2013 Available online 5 November 2013 Keywords: Mobile advertising Time pressure Advertising repetition SMS advertisements Context

a b s t r a c t This study conducted two experiments to investigate the influence of advertising repetition and time pressure on mobile advertisement effectiveness. The first experiment examined the effect of advertising repetition in everyday life. SMS advertisements with different repetitions were sent to participants during 6 weeks. The results indicated that it was better to send less than three mobile advertisements each day. The second experiment examined the effect of time pressure in the lab controlled environment. Under high or low time pressure, participants received SMS advertisements while searching information through webpages. The results indicated that low time pressure contributed to better mobile advertisement effectiveness than high time pressure. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Objectives and significance Mobile advertisers must be very carefully not to risk privacy issues and customer trust. Privacy and security concern is one key obstacle to the success of mobile advertising (Gohring, 2002; Kotch, 2001; Mobile Marketing Association, 2012) and could threaten the entire m-advertising market, at least in the short term (Saunders, 2003). For example, 80% of consumers worry about privacy invasion in SMS campaigns (Forrester, 2001). One common solution is to ask for the permission before SMS campaigns (Barwise and Strong, 2002; Godin, 1999; Saunders, 2003; Leppaniemi and Karjaluoto, 2005). However, asking for consumers’ permission is the very first step. The next important question is how to properly deliver advertisements. Customers perceive the right ways, time, and place as important factors (Leppaniemi and Karjaluoto, 2005). This is supported by Fuller (2003), five factors could help marketers to distance themselves from spam: frequency, relevance, control, confidentiality and unsolicited. Both studies stress the importance of advertising timing. Advertising timing is studied in traditional media rather than mobile devices. In the past, many human factor specialists, psychologists and engineers have devoted their efforts towards how to improve advertising scheduling, which comprise advertising repetition and advertising week time. However, most of these studies focus on traditional advertising media, for example, newspaper, television and so on. As the use of mobile devices becomes widespread throughout the world, it is important for the researchers to think about the timing in mobile advertising area. The context is another important characteristic of mobile adverting. If mobile advertisements are delivered in proper context, it will lead to high possibility of impact (Gao, 2006). Previous studies mainly consider the context in terms of locations, and few considered time pressure. This study will fill the gap.

⇑ Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 10 62776664; fax: +86 10 62794399. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (P.-L. Patrick Rau), [email protected] (J. Zhou), [email protected] (D. Chen), [email protected] (T.-P. Lu). 0736-5853/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2013.10.003

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The purpose of this research is to investigate how to maximize the effectiveness of advertising messages for mobile phone users by studying advertising timing (advertising repetition) and advertising context (time pressure). Two experiments were carried out to study chosen characteristics in particular, through which a concept model was build and validated.

2. Literature review 2.1. Advertising repetition In this research, advertising repetition means the times an individual is exposed to a mobile advertisement in a day. Repetition not only provided more opportunities for an individual to process message arguments but repetition also aroused feelings of tedium or psychological reactance that ultimately proved detrimental to persuasion (Alwitt and Mitchell, 1985). Advertising repetition also influenced perception about the manufacturer’s effort and credibility (Kirmani, 1997). An inverted U-shaped relationship between repetition and attitudes was reported for traditional media (Cacioppo and Petty, 1979; Calder and Brian, 1980). When the number of message repetitions increased, persuasion and advertisements recall first increased but then wore out because high exposure frequencies induce expressions of displeasure and annoyance (Alwitt and Mitchell, 1985; Appel, 1971; Cacioppo and Petty, 1979, 1980; Gorn and Goldberg, 1980; Grass and Wallace, 1969; Miller, 1976). Therefore, Miller (1976) found that moderate exposure led to significantly more positive attitude toward the posters than low exposure and high exposure. This inverted U-shaped relationship was also seen among advertisements through TV and Internet. The effectiveness of advertisement increased with advertisement repetition at first, however, the effect of the advertisement was saturated and decreases if advertisement repetition exceeded a certain point (Park et al., 2008). The optimal repetition for traditional media was three exposure (Berger, 1992; Berger and Mitchell, 1989; Gorn and Goldberg, 1980; Petty and Cacioppo, 1979). Specifically, Petty and Cacioppo (1979) found an increase in agreement with an attitudinal position in the one and three exposure conditions, but by five exposure a decreasing trend became apparent. Also, Gorn and Goldberg (1980) reported that children voiced a greater preference for the product after receiving three advertisement exposure compared to children receiving either one or five exposure. Few lab controlled study considered the optimal repetition for mobile advertising, and there are only two qualitative studies. Barwise and Strong’s research (2002) indicated that receiving three text messages a day was remarked ‘‘about right.’’ If people received more frequent advertisements, it may trigger a ‘‘delete on receipt’’ reaction. Haghirian et al. (2005) interviewed 815 mobile phone users and found that a high frequency of exposure decreased the perceived advertising value. 2.2. Time pressure Stress occurs when there is an imbalance between the demands from the outside and the individual’s personal capacity or resources to deal with the situation (Chalmers, 1981; Cox and Mackq, 1981). A time constraint may lead to the experience of time pressure, and in turn increase the level of arousal and psychological stress (Keinan et al., 1987; Lundberg, 1993; Maule and Hockey, 1993), and change human behavior (Svenson and Edland, 1993). Therefore, there is quite a long tradition of studying decision-making under time pressure (Maule, 1997; Maule and Edland, 1997). Time pressure prevents a thorough and in-depth processing of information. It could make people seek cognitive closure and stop considering important aspects of multiple alternatives (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983). Instead, they make fast decisions through the use of heuristics, but the problem is that such heuristics or a focus on salient cues frequently result in systematic decision-making errors (Tversky and Kahneman, 1974) or preference reversals (Diederich, 1997). One solution is to adopt better strategies to deal with time pressure. People could increase in the speed of information processing, reduce the amount of information processing undertaken, induce a switch from compensatory to non-compensatory decision strategies, and increase the use of the attribute based processing instead of the alternative based processing (Maule and Andrade, 1997). The relationship between time pressure and information search behavior has inconclusive results. On one hand, an inverse relationship between information search and time pressure were identified (Beatty and Smith, 1987; Blodgett et al., 1995; Jang, 1996; Moore and Lehman, 1980; Putrevu and Ratchford, 1997; Urbany et al., 1996). On the other hand, some studies found there is no relationship between time pressure and information search (Putrevu and Ratchford, 1997). The level of time stress may explain its different influence on information searching. At low stress situation, increase stress by increasing arousal and effort mobilization will increase performance. A higher level of arousal, stress begins to product the attentional and memory difficulties that cause performance to decrease (Yerkes and Dodson, 1908).

3. Hypothesis and methodology Based on the discussion in the previous chapter, a research framework (Fig. 1) is proposed which comprises two independent variables: advertising repetition (2 mobile advertisements per day, 3 mobile advertisements per day, 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day), and time pressure (high time pressure and low time pressure). The

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Independent Variable Timing Advertising Repetition 2 mobile ads per day 3 mobile ads per day 4 mobile ads per day 5 mobile ads per day Context Time pressure high time pressure low time pressure

Dependent Variable Ads memorization Attitude towards mobile ads Attitude towards brand Involvement with mobile ads Purchase intention

Fig. 1. Research framework.

dependent variables are mobile advertisements memorization (ad free recall and ad recognition), attitude towards mobile advertisements, attitude towards brand, involvement with mobile advertisements and purchase intention. 3.1. Hypotheses Hypothesis 1.1. Customers who receive 3 mobile advertisements per day have better mobile advertising effectiveness (ads memorization, attitude towards mobile advertisements, attitude towards brand, involvement with mobile advertisements and purchase intention) than customers who received 4 mobile advertisements per day. Hypothesis 1.2. Customers who receive 3 mobile advertisements per day have better mobile advertising effectiveness (ads memorization, attitude towards mobile advertisements, attitude towards brand, involvement with mobile advertisements and purchase intention) than customers who received 5 mobile advertisements per day. Hypothesis 1.3. Customers who receive 2 mobile advertisements per day have better mobile advertising effectiveness (ads memorization, attitude towards mobile advertisements, attitude towards brand, involvement with mobile advertisements and purchase intention) than customers who received 4 mobile advertisements per day. Hypothesis 1.4. Customers who receive 2 mobile advertisements per day have better mobile advertising effectiveness (ads memorization, attitude towards mobile advertisements, attitude towards brand, involvement with mobile advertisements and purchase intention) than customers who received 5 mobile advertisements per day. Empirical evidence from the literature (Berger, 1992; Berger and Mitchell, 1989) supported a three exposure manipulation. According to Barwise and Colin’s research (2002), 82% of users accept three text messages a day. While the qualitative research indicated there is a danger that too many will become an irritant and trigger a ‘‘delete on receipt’’ reaction (Barwise and Strong, 2002). Then hypothesis 1 is proposed. Hypothesis 2. Users who received mobile advertisements when they are under low time pressure have better mobile advertising effectiveness (ads memorization, attitude towards mobile advertisements, attitude towards brand, involvement with mobile advertisements and purchase intention) than customers who are under high time pressure. Time pressure would affect human behavior and information processing. Many empirical findings indicated that as time pressure increases, information search behavior decreases (Beatty and Smith, 1987; Moore and Lehman, 1980; Jang, 1996; Urbany et al., 1996; Blodgett et al., 1995). Besides, increasing time pressure appears to be an increased selectivity attention or attention narrowing (Stokes and Kite, 1994), which represents serious bottlenecks in human information processing. Then hypothesis 2 is proposed. 3.2. Experiment 1: effects of advertising repetition 3.2.1. Participants Seventy-two volunteers (34 female and 38 male) from the University in Beijing, were randomly assigned into four groups. The participants were all college students with no prior knowledge about the tasks to be performed during the experiment. The participants’ age ranged from 21 to 30 years (mean = 23.5, S.D. = 1.61). 46 participants used mobile phones more than 4 years. 96.1% participants have previously used SMS, and 69.4% participants have used MMS. 68% participants have on line shopping experience.

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Table 1 The examples of mobile ads used in experiment 1. Ads type

Advertisement

Brand building-food

What’s your breakfast? Jia Chao egg pie, A yummy pie make you love to eat. Come to louts and bring it home! Super cool! Yuan Tian sports water bottle, Swiss precision and design. Light and Bacteria resistance. Perfect for work or school or sports Lotus sales! Maxwell house Coffee costs only 19.50 rmb per pack! Good to the last drop. Conveniently packaged for your home or office! Lotus sales! Colgate toothpaste costs only 7.50 rmb, Luminous, Crystal Clean Mint, and Paradise Fresh.

Brand building-home and sports Special offer-drink Special offer-beauty and health

3.2.2. Tasks A longitudinal study in which participants were exposed to a supermarket’s permission-based campaign lasted for 6 weeks. In each week, participants received mobile advertisements in different week time, early part of the week, and middle part of the week or weekend. The mobile advertisements are pushed to the participants in two types: brand building and special offer. And the advertisements covered four kinds of products: food, drink, home and sports, beauty and health. The general attitude towards these product categories was measured before the experiment and used as control variable in data analysis. In the experiment, the participants received the same quantity advertisements in advertising types and product types. There are totally 30 different advertisements used in 6 weeks, and four examples were shown as Table 1.

3.2.3. Experimental design and variables A single factor experiment design is used. The independent variable was advertising repetition (2 mobile advertisements per day, 3 mobile advertisements per day, 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day). The dependent variables were advertisement memorization, attitude towards the advertisements, and attitude towards the brand, involvement with the advertisement and purchase intention. Advertisements memorization is measured by a free recall test and a recognition test. The recognition test asks the participants to select products and brand names they received out of answers. Attitude towards advertisements was measured using five questions (Ha, 1996) with a scale from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest). Cronbach’s alpha of the original questionnaire is between 0.91 and 0.98, implying a high level of reliability. Attitude towards brand was measured using five questions (Li and Bukovac, 1999) with a scale from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest). Cronbach’s alpha of the original questionnaire is 0.91, implying a high level of reliability. Involvement with the advertisements was measured using five questions (Norris and Colman, 1992) with a scale from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest). Cronbach’s alpha of the original questionnaire is 0.78, implying an acceptable level of reliability. Purchase intention is measured using one question with a scale from 1 (lowest) to 7 (highest). The question is ‘‘If you see the same product in the market, would you like to buy it?’’ The experiment lasted 6 weeks. According to the experiment design, 72 participants were divided into 4 groups, which were divided again into 3 subgroups. Each subgroup contained 6 participants, who received mobile advertisements in different part of week each week. To minimize learning effect, the arrangement of the week time is according to the following sequence:  Early part of the week (Monday and Tuesday), middle part of the week (Thursday and Friday), weekend (Saturday and Sunday), early part of the week, middle part of the week, weekend.  Middle part of the week, weekend, early part of the week, middle part of the week, weekend, early part of the week.  Weekend, early part of the week, middle part of the week, weekend, early part of the week, middle part of the week.

3.2.4. Procedure Before the experiment, each participant was asked whether they like to receive the mobile advertisements on their own cell phone. They were also told the mobile advertisements coming from the big supermarket near the campus and the information was free and real. All the participants agreed to receive mobile advertisements, which mean they are in the permission based campaign. Each participant began the experimentation by filling out a demography questionnaire concerning their personal characteristics and a general attitude questionnaire concerning the attitude toward mobile advertisements and four type’s products. During the experiment, participants received mobile advertisements in 2 days each week and were asked to read the message in their way. The advertisements were sent by the experiment operator in fixed time in the day time between 9:00 am and 17:00 pm. In the night, between 20:00 pm and 24:00 pm, participants were asked to fill online questionnaire about the messages they received in the same day. During the 6 weeks, each participant should finish 12 questionnaires about the mobile advertisements. Finally, they were asked to fill an additional questionnaire concerning the whole experiment.

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P.-L. Patrick Rau et al. / Telematics and Informatics 31 (2014) 463–476 Table 2 Tasks in experiment 2. Content Task Task Task Task Task Task Task Task Task

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help Help

Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob Bob

buying flowers for his mother in mother’s day searching news for his homework picking a DVD as a gift for Emma finding a book, which is about health choosing a cake for his birthday picking a literature book for killing time buying a CD, which would be played in a party searching news for a speech planning his travel

3.3. Experiment 2: effects of time pressure context 3.3.1. Participants Forty volunteers (17 female and 23 male) from Tsinghua University, Beijing, were randomly assigned into four groups. The participants were college students with no prior knowledge about the tasks to be performed during the experiment and did not attend the first experiment. The participants’ age ranged from 22 to 29 years (mean = 23, S.D. = 1.86). 26 participants have used mobile phones more than 4 years. 95% participants have used SMS, and 30% participants have used MMS.

3.3.2. Tasks Nine online information searching tasks were designed as shown in Table 2. Participants were told to help a friend, whose name is Bob, to searching news or buy gifts on the experiment websites. The websites comprised 5 main parts: news, entertainment, gift, and book and travel information. In each particular task, participant need browse 4 or 5 web pages to find the final answer. The following task would not show until the former one was accomplished. During the experiment, participants received 5 mobile advertisements right after the task 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 started, which were controlled by the experiment operator. Participant should stop and read these advertisements and then go back to the task. This experiment took around 30 min.

1. High time pressure

2. Low time pressure

3. High time pressure

Fig. 2. Left column design.

4. Low time pressure

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3.3.3. Apparatus and system A NEC Versa E600 notebook was used for information searching tasks. The websites and the structure are shown in appendix. The web pages are divided into three parts: the header, the main part and the left column. The left column was designed in four types as shown in Fig. 2 to transfer different context. For different time pressure context, different content is shown on the column. In high time pressure group, on the top of the left column, a sentence is shown as ‘‘Please finish the task as fast as you can’’ or the content contains one of the following sentences: ‘‘Hurry!! We have limit time’’ ‘‘I have to go to help Linda, could you help me find this as soon as possible’’ and so on; In low time pressure group, on the top of the left column, a sentence is shown as ‘‘Please slow down and do not rush, you have enough time’’ or the content contains one of the following sentences, ‘‘Take it easy, we have plenty time’’ ‘‘It is still early, we could check something else’’ and so on. All the participants received and read mobile advertisements in Nokia7600 mobile phone, with a screen of 176  208 pixels and 35  41 mm. 3.3.4. Experimental design and variables A single factor design is used. Independent variable is time pressure (high time pressure and low time pressure). Dependent variables are advertisements memorization, attitude toward the advertisements, attitude toward the brand, involvement with the advertisements and purchase intention. These variables were measured the same as in the previous experiment. 3.3.5. Procedure At the beginning, all participants filled out a general information questionnaire concerning their personal characteristics and Internet, mobile handset experience. Each participant was given an instruction of the tasks. Participants in high time pressure group were instructed to perform the tasks as quickly as possible without sacrificing accuracy; Participants in low time pressure group were instructed to perform the tasks as easy as they can. Following the instruction, each participant performed the online information searching tasks and received mobile advertisements. The participants did not know that the purpose of the experiment was to test mobile advertisements effectiveness. Upon task completion, each participant was given a questionnaire on advertisements effectiveness. The performance time was around 30–40 min. 4. Results and discussion Before testing the hypotheses, all of the collected data were checked for model adequacy. The data were transformed if the model adequacy did not hold. Nonparametric analysis was conducted if the model adequacy was not held after transformation. The internal consistencies for the questionnaire responses, using Cronbach’s alpha, were 0.96 for the attitude towards advertisements questionnaire, 0.96 for the attitude towards brand questionnaire and 0.96 for the involvement with the advertisements questionnaire. In experiment 1, for all the mobile advertisements used are come from real champions, the general attitude towards products was measured at the beginning of the experiment. Significant differences were found between the food product attitude and beauty and health product attitude in each group. These two factors are used as covariates in the ANOVA process. In experiment 2, significant differences were found in information costs on mobile phone per month in each group. For all the mobile advertisements used came from real brand. To eliminate brand effect, the general product attitude was measured 1 week later. These two factors are used as covariates in the ANOVA process. 4.1. Testing hypothesis 1 The intention of hypothesis 1 was to examine how the advertising repetition might affect effect of mobile advertisements. Significant differences were found in advertisements free recall (F = 117.82, p = 0.00) advertisements recognition (F = 97.11, p = 0.00), attitude towards mobile advertisements (F = 3.75, p = 0.01), attitude towards brand (F = 6.22 p = 0.00), involvement with mobile advertisements (F = 5.85, p = 0.00) and purchase intention (F = 5.15, p = 0.00), as shown in Table 3. Through Mann–Whitney U test for advertisements memorization and Fisher LSD test for attitude towards mobile advertisements, attitude towards brand, involvement with mobile advertisements and purchase intention, the detail results is shown as following: For advertisement free recall, significant differences were found between 2 mobile advertisements per day and 3 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 3 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 3 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.02). No significant difference was found between 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day. For advertisement recognition, significant differences were found between 2 mobile advertisements per day and 3 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 3 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.02). No significant difference was found between 3 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day.

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P.-L. Patrick Rau et al. / Telematics and Informatics 31 (2014) 463–476 Table 3 Data for testing hypothesis one. Independent variable

Mean

S.D.

F

p

Ads free recall

1 2 3 4

0.94 0.66 0.49 0.56

0.14 0.27 0.20 0.29

117.82

0.00k⁄

Ads recognition

1 2 3 4

0.98 0.77 0.82 0.67

0.07 0.24 0.14 0.24

97.11

0.00k⁄

Attitude towards mobile ads

1 2 3 4

24.47 23.03 23.02 21.64

3.95 4.10 5.31 4.65

3.75

0.01⁄

Attitude towards brand

1 2 3 4

25.54 23.87 23.15 23.45

3.24 3.82 3.90 3.58

6.22

0.00⁄

Involvement with mobile ads

1 2 3 4

23.02 21.61 20.60 20.23

4.11 4.40 4.80 4.67

5.85

0.00⁄

Purchase intention

1 2 3 4

4.90 4.62 4.35 4.43

0.92 0.94 0.98 0.92

5.15

0.00⁄

Note: 1: 2 SMS per day; 2: 2 SMS per day; 3: 2 SMS per day; 4: 2 SMS per day; k: Kruskal–Wallis test; ⁄: p < 0.05.

For attitude towards mobile advertisements, significant differences were found between 2 mobile advertisements per day and 3 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.04); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.04); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 3 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.047); 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.048). No significant difference was found between 3 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day. For attitude towards brand, significant differences were found between 2 mobile advertisements per day and 3 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00). No significant difference was found among 3 mobile advertisements per day, 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day. For involvement with mobile advertisements, significant differences were found between 2 mobile advertisements per day and 3 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.03); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 3 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.04). No significant difference was found neither between 3 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day, nor between 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day. For purchase intention, significant differences were found between 2 mobile advertisements per day and 3 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.03); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 4 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00); 2 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day (p = 0.00). No significant difference was found among 3 mobile advertisements per day, 4 mobile advertisements per day and 5 mobile advertisements per day. Hypothesis 1 was supported. The results indicate that, with advertising frequency enhances, the advertisement memorization and attitude towards mobile advertisements decrease, which was consistent with past studies. According to the message repetition researches, tedium should occur at higher levels of repetition when the repeated advertisements differ than when they are the same (Alwitt and Mitchell, 1985). According to Barwise and Colin’s research (2002), there is a danger that more frequent adverts will become an irritant and trigger deleting on receipt reaction. In the meanwhile, increasing the repetition of adverts could use up message memory, which means fewer messages are read thoroughly. This behavior probably becomes big obstacle for getting better advertisements memorization. To explain the attitude towards mobile advertisements, it has been argued that some information in memory is stored with a mood feature (Bower, 1981; Clark and Isen, 1982; Harvey et al., 1982; Isen et al., 1978). For example, if excessive exposure arouse a negative mood and negative memory bases, the negatively biased cognitive response to the message can be directed toward the setting or advertisement. To the extent that overexposure should lead to negative attitudes toward the advertisements and the attitude-object (Alwitt and Mitchell, 1985).

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The results for involvement with the advertisements were consistent with past studies. Former researches indicated that, for advertisements’ over exposure, customer would ignore the advertisements, which is because the advertisements information is encoded in memory with the emotional characters (Bower, 1981; Clark and Isen, 1982; Harvey et al., 1982; Isen et al., 1978). Thus, in this research, the involvement increased with the attitude increased. Attitude towards the brand (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975; Lutz et al., 1983; Mitchell and Olson, 1981) and purchase intention (Lutz, 1985; Mackenzie and Lutz, 1989; Mackenzie et al., 1986) was determined by attitude towards advertisements in popular opinions, which were also consistent with past studies. 4.2. Testing hypothesis 2 The intention of hypothesis 2 was to examine how the time pressure might affect effect of mobile advertisements. Significant differences were found in advertisements free recall (F = 4.24, p = 0.047), advertisements recognition (F = 9.27, p = 0.00), attitude towards brand (F = 6.39 p = 0.02) and involvement with advertisements (F = 4.64, p = 0.04), as shown in Table 4. No significant differences in attitude towards mobile advertisements (F = 1.62, p = 0.21) and purchase intention (F = 3.66, p = 0.06). Hypothesis 2 was supported. The results for advertisement memorization were consistent with past studies. According to the former empirical findings, as time pressure increases, the deeper information processing process would be affected, leading to epistemic freezing (Kruglanski and Freund, 1983), which lead to bad memorization. In this research, participants in high time pressure group felt great anxiety and had to speedup to complete tasks, which could be found out in the after scenario questionnaire. The negative effects of anxiety stress on working memory were identified (Davies and Parasuraman, 1982; Wachtel, 1968), which could reduce working-memory capacity and bring cognitive problem during the problem solving task (Berkun, 1964). The results for involvement with mobile advertisements were consistent with past studies. Consumer involvement is an important moderator of the type and amount of information processing that is elicited by a persuasive argument (Petty et al., 1983). According to the consumer behavior studies, a negative relationship was identified between shopping time pressure and the level of shopper involvement (Nelmapius et al., 2005). In this research, participants’ main task is internet information browsing and searching. As time pressure increasing, they immersed in the task and paid less attention on the mobile advertisements, which caused users involvement decreased in high time pressure group. The results for attitude towards brand and purchase intention were consistent with past studies. Although no significant difference in purchase intention was found, the p value is 0.06, very close to the significant level 0.05. Thus, time pressure affected participants’ purchase intention greatly. Customers’ attitude had important diagnostic capabilities for an ad’s success or failure (Mitchell and Olson, 1981). It is widely agreed that attitude towards advertisements had significant influence on attitude towards brand and purchase intention (Lutz, 1985; Mackenzie and Lutz, 1989; Mackenzie et al., 1986), which indicated that the more well-liked an advertisement was, the more positive responses to the brand were (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1975; Lutz et al., 1983; Mitchell and Olson, 1981). 4.3. General discussions This study found that time pressure had great impact on mobile advertisement. Under high time pressure context, people will be easily disturbed by coming mobile advertisements, which lead to low advertisements memorization and bad attitude. However, under low time pressure context, people are easier and friendlier to mobile advertisements and have significantly better mobile advertisements effectiveness. Advertising repetition also has significant effect on people receiving mobile advertisements. The results indicated that more than 3 mobile advertisements a day would interrupt people and make them ignore the messages and have negative attitude towards mobile advertising. The details are: participants who received 2 mobile advertisements a day have better advertisements recall, better attitude towards mobile advertisements and high involvement with the advertisements than other received 3, 4 or 5 mobile advertisements a day; participants who received 3 mobile advertisements a day have better

Table 4 Data for testing hypothesis two. Independent variable

Ads free recall Ads recognition Attitude towards ads Attitude towards brand Involvement with ads Purchase intention ⁄

p < 0.05.

High time pressure

Low time pressure

Mean

S.D.

Mean

S.D.

1.85 2.10 18.09 20.74 16.49 3.46

1.24 0.93 4.16 4.12 4.11 0.84

2.83 3.15 20.77 24.55 20.09 4.03

1.38 1.03 5.02 3.92 4.68 0.85

F

p

4.24 9.27 1.62 6.39 4.64 3.66

0.047⁄ 0.00⁄ 0.21 0.02⁄ 0.04⁄ 0.06

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Advertisement effectiveness

Ads need effect

2

3

4

5

Advertising repetition (Mobile ads/day)

Ads reject effect

Fig. 3. Concept model of advertising repetition and advertisement effectiveness.

advertisements recall, better attitude towards mobile advertisements and high involvement with the advertisements than participants received 4 and 5 mobile advertisements a day. A new model of advertisements effectiveness affected by advertising repetition is proposed, as shown in Fig. 3. The relationship curve is not like converse U shape any more. For mobile advertisements’ high exposure, high presence, high personalizing, high interactivity and high sensitivity characters (Gao, 2006), with the increase of mobile advertisements repetition, the advertisements effectiveness decreases lightly at the beginning (around 3 mobile advertisements per day) and then drops greatly (from 4 mobile advertisements per day to 5 mobile advertisements per day), which could be explained by two factors, ‘‘advertisements accept effect’’ and ‘‘advertisements reject effect’’. In the permission-based market, customers opt-in before they involved into campaigns, which means that they need commerce information and have positive attitude towards advertisements at the beginning (Barwise and Strong, 2002). In this situation, without being affected by other factors, the ‘‘advertisements accept effect’’ keeps constant and positive. However, as mobile advertisements repetition increases, customers have worse advertisements memorization, worse attitude towards the advertisements and brand, lower involvement with advertisements and worse purchase intention, which could be explained by customers feeling intrusion and losing the trust to the advertising agency or even the advertising market. In this case, the ‘‘advertisements reject effect’’ is increasing. By combining advertisements accept effect and advertisements reject effect, with mobile advertisements repetition increases, the advertisements effectiveness decreases continuously. The curve is made by quality data and the result of the research accorded with this model. According to this model, people would be disturbed greatly when they receive more than 3 mobile advertisements per day. However, this feeling is not strong when they are pushed 2 messages a day. With the message quantity increases, consumers concern more over privacy and invasiveness, first slightly (around 3 mobile advertisements per day) and then greatly (more than 3 mobile advertisements per day).

5. Conclusions This study investigated the influence of advertising timing and context on the effectiveness of advertisements for mobile phone users through two experiments. The first experiment simulated how users deal with mobile advertisements in their daily life, which included various contexts. Then, context was controlled in the second experiment, and was categorized as low time pressure context and high time pressure context. Two guidelines were achieved:  It is better to send mobile advertisements in low time pressure context.  It is better to send less than 3 mobile advertisements to a consumer each day. One finding is that advertising repetition has great impact on mobile advertisements and a concept model is validated. This result provides a solid foundation for the development of design guidelines for mobile advertisements. The design of mobile advertisements should balance the support in users’ goals and the commercial goals. To minimize disturbance, advertisements senders should restrict the advertisements quantity per day. For the service agency, some software could be developed according to the result of this research, for helping customer filtering or reject over quantity mobile advertisements. Another important finding is that mobile advertisement effectiveness is better under low time pressure context than under high time pressure context. Thus advertiser should choose time space when customers are relax and free, for example the noon break or sometime in the weekend. Beside particular time zone, since different customers have different life rhythm, for example the office workers and the students, the advertising schedule should be made separately considering customer categories.

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The mobile advertisements market is sensitive and fragile, and it is possible to lose users’ trust by inappropriate advertising timing or context. The result of this research could be used to establish industry standards for mobile marketing and watch out for violations of consumer rights, which will benefit both the advertising market and customers. Through minimizing disturbance and privacy invasion, when consumers are protected, mobile advertisements are also protected rather than ignored. Acknowledgements The authors would like to acknowledge the support from National Natural Science Foundation (70971074) and National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars (71188001). Appendix A. Websites

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