A model for implementation and assessment of context-aware mobile-based advertising solutions

Abstract

Advertising is vital to business as it helps to register the business's or events presence to a saturated market. Advertising has been in existence since 4000 BC. The advertising methods have revolutionized since the invention of advertising in the marketing mix. There are numerous advertising methods using different advertising media such as newspapers, radio, television, outdoor advertising and mobile phones. The choice of the advertising media and method has to be analyzed critically so as to have high percentage of reach and a good return on investment. TnKenya, there are 24.9 million mobile phone subscribers representing a penetration of 63.2% for every 100 inhabitants. Mobile phones by their nature are portable devices. Due to the intimate nature that people attribute to mobile phones, they can be used by merchants to reach large number of the population. Mobile phone advertising is not a unique method as merchants have used SMS to send information and offers regarding their products and services. This research seeks to assess the viability of context-aware mobile based applications in the Kenyan market and design a prototype based on the fmdings. Context-aware mobile advertising involves the provision of location aware advertising messages to mobile phone subscribers using a defined context. This enables merchants to reach consumers with highly customized promotions and advertisements, depending on their location which enables customers to get adverts based on the location they are in and information they prefer. This research and prototype was used to get the opinion of the merchants and consumers regarding location aware advertisements. The results demonstrated that context-aware solution is currently not being extensively used in advertising. It was also established that both advertisers and consumers were willing to adopt this form of advertising. A number of concerns were raised, the major one being cost of running the application and consumers privacy. A prototype was designed to deliver advertisements to consumers based on their proximity to the business. The prototype was tested and it revealed that since the application was relying on GPS, it was not convenient as GPS relies on satellites and it is an outdoor system, hence cannot be used within storey buildings, therefore, there is a need to explore on how to get context using other technologies such as cell triangulation