Willingness to accept mobile coupons : do pre-existing attitudes towards m-coupons really matter?

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Willingness to accept mobile coupons: do

pre-existing attitudes towards m-coupons

really matter?

Program: MSc Business Administration

Track Specialization: Marketing Track

Course: Master’s thesis

Student: Antoni Dragnev

Student number: 10891218

Supervisor: Prof. Umut Konus

Due Date: January 29th_{, 2015, by 17:00}

Word count main text: 19, 312

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Statement of originality

This document is written by Student Antoni Dragnev who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.

I declare that the text and the work presented in this document is original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.

The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.

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Abstract

PURPOSE– This paper aims to examine the extent to which anchoring can be successfully applied to mobile coupon marketing to irrationally increase consumers’ willingness to accept and use mobile coupons.

DESIGN – This is an empirical study that adopts an experimental design based on an online-mediated survey. A between subject design with two conditions – anchored vs non-anchored is adopted. FINDINGS – The results of this study reveal that anchoring can be used to successfully increase consumers’ willingness to accept and redeem mobile coupons. This is highly irrational consumer behavior because the nature of the coupon does not change and consumers’ higher willingness to accept them is due to the influence of the anchor alone. The model explains 28.77% of the variance in acceptance rate and 59.81% of the variance in consumers’ willingness to use m-coupons. RESEARCH IMPLICATIONS – This paper demonstrates that anchoring can be used to tackle a serious issue in the mobile coupon literature. Therefore, it aims to commence a new avenue of research opportunities for scholars who could study the application of other psychology theories that accept consumer irrationality to influence consumers in the mobile domain.

PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS – The paper has immediate practical implications as marketing professionals can adopt m-coupon strategies that are built on the principles of anchoring to increase willingness to accept and redeem coupons even if the target market considers receiving such m-coupons as undesirable at first (which is the attitude of the majority of people in this study).

ORIGINALITY/VALUE – The originality of this paper is three-fold. Firstly, it applies a consumer psychology concept that has not been tested in mobile marketing. Moreover, it corrects some methodological issues in testing anchoring by considering the implications of the method on participant level of involvement by linking anchoring to the popular Elaboration-likelihood model (ELM). This is highly original because it increases the external validity of other anchoring studies. Thirdly, it stretches the concept of anchoring to change not only ambiguous attitudes (as proved by other studies), but also to change unambiguously negative attitudes, making valuable contributions to both mobile marketing and consumer behavior research;

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List of Figures and Tables

Figure 2.1. The four pillars of mobile coupons p.11

Figure 2.2. The Theory of Planned Behavior p.24

Figure 3.1. Conceptual model p.37

Figure 4.1. Research Methodology p.45

Table 2.1. Mobile marketing tools – definitions and potential uses p.15

Table 2.2. Mobile coupons summary p.22

Table 2.3. Prior research overview p.34

Table 3.1. Conceptual model p.44

Table 4.1. Participants’ profiles p.53

Table 4.2. Results of t-test and Descriptive Statistics for Attitude towards using m-coupons by condition

p.54

Table 5.1. Measurement scales p.60

Table 5.2. Correlation Matrix p.61

Table 5.3. Skewness and Kurtosis p.62

Table 5.4. Results of t-test and Descriptive Statistics for Attitude towards using m-coupons compared to value of 4

p.63

Table 5.5. Results of t-test and Descriptive Statistics for Attitude towards receiving m-coupons compared to value of 4

p.63

Table 5.6. Regression results for willingness to accept mobile coupons p.65

Table 5.7. Mediation test ATU p.66

Table 5.7. Mediation test ATR p.67

Table 5.9. Results of t-test and Descriptive Statistics for Attitude towards receiving m-coupons by condition

p.68

Table 5.10. Results of t-test and Descriptive Statistics for willingness to accept m-coupons by condition

p.69

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1. Introduction

Placing stimuli such as advertisements and discount coupons in the consumers’ environment to influence decision-makers’ thinking, feelings and actions is an integral part of marketing strategy (Peter, Olson, & Grunert, 1999). Moreover, different approaches to influencing consumers need to be adopted due to changes in the macro-environment such as technological developments (Peter et al., 1999). For instance, the introduction of the Internet has brought the concept of online marketing which represents a fundamentally different way of influencing consumers (Peter et al., 1999). A more recent development is the proliferation of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones (Bart, Stephen, & Sarvary, 2014; Gupta, 2013; Merisavo, Vesanen, Arponen, Kajalo, & Raulas, 2006; Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Varnali & Toker, 2010). Based on Peter et al. (1999), it can be inferred that different approaches are needed to influence consumers in their mobile environments. This is in line with Gupta (2013) who also suggests that the advancements of the mobile channel require new methods of influencing consumers. These new methods for influencing consumer behavior in the mobile domain can be summarized under what scholars refer to mobile marketing (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Varnali & Toker, 2010).

While some researchers have argued for a nearly omnipotent role of the mobile channel as it provides marketers with the ability to influence consumers at any place and any point in time (Varnali & Toker, 2010), the results of many studies do not seem to be in line with this proposition. To a large extent consumers have perceived mobile marketing to be intrusive and annoying (Shankar & Hollinger, 2007). This is not true only about mobile advertisements but also about mobile coupons (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). This is surprising because while mobile advertisements merely provide persuasive communication often in a poor format (Gupta, 2013), mobile coupons provide tangible economic benefits (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). This means that rational consumers should be willing to accept unsolicited and solicited mobile coupons alike because of this tangible economic benefit. However, in reality, decision-makers perceive unsolicited discounts mostly as intrusive and annoying (Achadinha, Jama, & Nel, 2014). One possible explanation for this phenomenon is that mobile devices are considered more personal than any other device and users are so afraid of being spammed (receiving mobile communications with abnormal frequency without their control) that they do not differentiate between these different marketing tools (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Shankar, Venkatesh, Hofacker, & Naik, 2010).

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A study showed that while 85% of consumers were willing to accept and redeem unsolicited paper

coupons, however only 10% were willing to accept and redeem unsolicited mobile coupons

(Mersdorf, 2010). Therefore, the prediction that mobile stimuli (e.g. mobile coupons) should be even more effective in influencing consumers (Varnali & Toker, 2010), has not been realized due to the fact that people perceive these as intrusive and are not willing to accept them even when they provide actual economic benefits.

The general advice to marketing practitioners has been to offer consumers the ability to opt-in to receive such mobile coupons in order to avoid being perceived as intrusive (i.e. to turn them from unsolicited to solicited) (Blum & McClellan, 2006; Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). While this seems like a sound advice, it has been shown that consumers generally have very low opt-in ratios and indicate that they are not interested in receiving mobile promotions (Shankar & Hollinger, 2007). This creates a substantial challenge for marketing practitioners, which makes the context of mobile coupons (or m-coupons) extremely interesting to study. Specifically, marketers think that they are offering a benefit to consumers in the form of mobile discount vouchers. However, consumers potentially irrationally perceive these as violation of their privacy. This raises the question of why marketers and researchers are investigating ways of increasing opting-in ratios opting-in a rational manner if it is possible that consumers react irrationally to mobile coupons.

Anchoring, defined as the “cognitive bias that describes the common human tendency to rely too

heavily on the first piece of information offered (the "anchor") when making subsequent decisions” (Allcott, 2015, p. 81), has been shown to change an ambiguous attitude to a positive attitude and

irrationally1 increase willingness to attend a poetry reading (Ariely, Loewenstein, & Prelec, 2006).

Therefore, anchoring could have the potential to alter mobile consumer behavior in such an irrational manner, and this research paper explores that potential in order to determine whether anchoring can be used to increase the willingness of consumers to accept m-coupons even when these same people have a negative attitude2 towards receiving m-coupons.

1_{It should be noted that anchoring does not always lead to irrational consumer decisions. Only when the anchor itself}

is arbitrary (i.e. the information is not relevant to the decision), e.g. asking people whether they would be willing to pay the equivalent of the last 3 digits of their social security number for a bottle of wine could lead to such a decision (Prelec, Ariely, & Loewenstein, 2003). If the actual willingness to pay is influenced by this anchor (the 3 digit number) it would be irrational because one’s social security number should play no role in determining wine valuation (Prelec et al., 2003).

2_{This study also tests the claim that people have a negative attitude towards receiving m-coupons and provides further}

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The study contributes to both consumer behavior and mobile marketing literature. For scholars, this means a new avenue of research opportunities that build on consumer irrationality theories. For marketing practitioners, this research offers insight into how to increase consumers’ willingness to accept unsolicited mobile coupons in their consumer environment which is likely to increase coupon-induced purchase behavior. The contributions are discussed further in Section 2.6. in Chapter 2.

In conclusion, the recent technological change, i.e. the proliferation of mobile devices, means that new approaches to influencing consumers need to be adopted (Peter et al., 1999). However, this also creates new challenges. For instance, traditional coupons are argued to be part of the consumer environment by being present in newspapers and magazines whereas mobile coupons become part of the consumer environment only when they are on a person’s device (Eze, 2010). Therefore, if marketers are to use unsolicited mobile coupons to produce coupon-induced purchase behavior, consumers first need to agree to being exposed to these stimuli in their mobile environments (Blum & McClellan, 2006).Otherwise, marketers could provide consumers with economically beneficial stimuli in the form of mobile discount coupons, however, due to the privacy issues associated with this channel, these are still not likely to influence consumers’ behavior in the intended way. A recent conceptual paper suggests that psychological and social theories (such as anchoring) are likely to be key in dealing with emerging digital, social media, and mobile marketing (DSMM) issues (Lamberton & Stephen, 2015). If I can show that anchoring could change consumers’ attitudes and increase consumers’ willingness to accept coupons, I shall provide empirical evidence to support this new claim.

This chapter presented the motivations for conducting the current research. The next chapter explores current available literature on this topic, identifies the research gap, the research question and the expected contributions. Subsequently, the third chapter introduces the conceptual model and hypotheses. The fourth chapter describes the research methodology. Furthermore, chapter 5 provides the results of this study while chapter 6 discusses these results. Next, chapter 7 outlines the managerial implications. Lastly, chapter 8 provides an overview of the limitations of this study and it provides an agenda for future research.

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2. Literature Review and Theoretical framework

The literature review and theoretical framework is organized according to four main sections, which I suggest should be referred to as the four pillars of mobile coupons research – mobile marketing, mobile coupons, models used to study mobile coupon adoption, and known/existing relationships between variables. I call these pillars because understanding each section (or each pillar) is crucial for the identification of the research gap and research question as well as for the development of the conceptual model and hypotheses (i.e. an understanding of how to offer “structural improvements of the pillars” is crucial to “improving the overall structure of the mobile marketing field”). More importantly, like in the process of laying the pillars of a building, if any of the key considerations are ignored, then potential structural problems could be missed and the new structural improvements (i.e. my empirical model) could be weak. Furthermore, a strong understanding of these pillars allows one to see why specific trade-offs were made (e.g. why specific variables and not others were selected to study this topic). The four pillars, as well as their main content, are represented visually in Figure 2.1. below:

Figure 2.1. The four pillars of mobile coupons

Pillar 1: Mobile marketing • Key issues • Definitions • Typology of m-tools Pillar 2: Mobile coupons • History • Functions • Typology of m-coupons • Barriers to adoption Pillar 3: Models • Models • Misconceptions • Debunking misconceptions Pillar 4: Known relationships • Attitudes • Attitudes and intentions • Demographics and intentions • Changing attitudes

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Once these pillars are well understood and their structural weaknesses identified, the last two sections discuss the research gap, research question and the contributions. Metaphorically, this can be seen as the work of an architect who studies the structural weaknesses of these pillars, proposes adjustments, and by implementing these adjustments contributes to the development of a conceptual model that improves our current understanding of the mobile marketing field (i.e. the architect contributes to “the construction of a more a resilient mobile marketing field”).

2.1. Pillar1: Mobile marketing

In the first paragraph of this thesis it was explained that putting advertisements and promotions in the consumer environment is considered a pivotal part of marketing as these stimuli are expected to elicit particular customer behaviors (Peter et al., 1999). Mobile marketing tools is the term used to summarize the new methods for influencing consumers in their mobile environments (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Varnali & Toker, 2010). One of these tools which is gaining practitioners and scholars attention are mobile coupons (Blundo, Cimato, & De Bonis, 2005; Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Im & Ha, 2013; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). eMarketer (2016) argues that in 2015 two in five companies in the US have used mobile coupons as part of their marketing strategy; and it is forecasted that by 2017 one in two companies (with an average size of > 100 employees) is likely to use mobile coupons to increase coupon-related consumer spending. Despite its increasing importance in practice, the literature on mobile marketing is highly fragmented (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Shankar & Hollinger, 2007; Shankar et al., 2010; Varnali & Toker, 2010). Moreover, there is no clear definition of the term and there is a large degree of confusion regarding mobile marketing tools (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). Therefore, the next Sub-section examines the key issues in the current mobile marketing literature. It is necessary to understand these issues and their impact on the field before this study can begin to answer important questions regarding mobile marketing's overarching purpose, tools to achieve it and how mobile coupons differ from other mobile marketing tools.

2.1.1. Contemporary issues within the mobile marketing literature

As there is no widely accepted definition of mobile marketing, in writing scholarly articles about mobile marketing, researchers have either chosen to not define the term at all (Achadinha et al., 2014; Varnali & Toker, 2010) or to give their own definitions of the term (Barnes & Scornavacca, 2004; Bauer, Barnes, Reichardt, & Neumann, 2005; Scharl, Dickinger, & Murphy, 2005).

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This lack of clarity has led scholars to use the terms mobile marketing, mobile coupons, mobile advertising, mobile commerce, mobile business, wireless marketing and mobile communications interchangeably (Tähtinen, 2005; Varnali & Toker, 2010). For instance, Tähtinen (2005) shows that scholars have defined mobile marketing, mobile commerce and mobile advertising with the exact same definition – “the distribution of messages and promotions” (p.152). Moreover, if it is unclear what mobile marketing is (i.e. its definition), then the reader should not be surprised that it is not clear what the specific mobile marketing tools that are available to marketers and academicians are and what their differences are (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Shankar et al., 2010). Specifically, in some articles mobile coupons are seen as part of mobile advertising. For instance, according to Park, Shenoy, and Salvendy (2008) mobile coupons are mobile advertisements whose purpose is to increase sales. In others, mobile coupons take a separate role as a promotional rather than an advertising tool (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). The latter considers mobile advertising and mobile couponing to be different approaches to mobile marketing (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). This lack of clear conceptualization of the terms and tools used in mobile marketing literature has arguably had a negative impact on theory development as it could misguide mobile scholars and unfamiliar readers alike.

This paper is focused on a specific mobile marketing instrument – mobile coupons. Therefore, to avoid founding my hypotheses on research undertaken on different albeit related topics (e.g. using mobile advertising literature or variables to create hypotheses for mobile coupons), Sub-section

2.1.2. provides a clear definition of mobile marketing and its tools, and shows that the terms mobile

advertisements, mobile commerce and mobile marketing are not its synonyms. Once this has been clarified, in Section 2.2., the focus of this review is shifted to the literature on mobile coupons. In short, by providing clarifications of mobile marketing and its tools in the next sub-section, this paper aims to avoid some of the mistakes that other researchers in this domain have made.

2.1.2. Mobile marketing definition and its tools

To date, one of the most commonly quoted definitions of the term was introduced by Shankar and Balasubramanian (2009) who define mobile marketing as the “two-way or multi-way communication and promotion of an offer between a firm and its customers using a mobile medium, device, or technology” (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009, p. 118). In these authors’ view mobile marketing can include mobile advertising, mobile couponing and other

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relationship-building activities (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). From this definition it becomes evident that different mobile marketing tools can be used to achieve an overarching goal of building customer-firm relationships. This is in line with Achadinha et al. (2014) and Leppaniemi and Karjaluoto (2005) who also argue that the primary purpose of mobile marketing is to build strong relationships with one’s customers. Likewise, it becomes clear that there is separate role for communication and promotion which suggests that mobile coupons should not be viewed as part of mobile advertising as Park et al. (2008) did, but rather as a separate promotional tool just like Shankar and Balasubramanian (2009) did. Lastly, this definition shows that there are at least two requirements for mobile marketing to take place. Firstly, (potential) customers have to have a constant access to a mobile network which permits the interaction with the firm. Secondly, people need to have a mobile device via which this interaction could take place. These conditions have also been acknowledged by other scholars such as Kaplan (2012).

Now that mobile marketing has been defined and its main purpose has been clarified, it is time to classify the different mobile marketing tools and their potential use in building customer-firm relationships. Again, due to the high fragmentation of the mobile marketing literature, a widely-accepted framework for categorizing the mobile marketing tools does not exist. As a result, scholars have tried a variety of approaches in categorizing these tools – 1) based on general function (Barutçu, 2007; Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006), 2) based on functions within an industry (Shankar et al., 2010), 3) based on the research’s central focus and perspective (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009; Varnali & Toker, 2010) amongst others. This paper, presents a categorization according to general function as this would facilitate the discussion on what each tool is, what its function is and how it could be used to accomplish the overall goal of building customer relationships. Barutçu (2007) delineates 7 categories of mobile marketing tools, namely: (i) mobile advertising, (ii) mobile couponing, (iii) mobile entertainment, (iv) location-based mobile services, (v) mobile internet, (vi) mobile banking and (vii) mobile commerce3. I have provided the definitions and potential applications of each of these tools as presented by the author for each of these terms in Table 2.1. located below.

3_{One year before Barutçu’s typology was introduced, Pousttchi and Wiedemann (2006) presented a similar typology}

at a conference that has similar categories and clarifies the potential use of each tool type. Since Pousttchi and Wiedemann (2006) offered good insights into the potential use, the insights from Pousttchi and Wiedemann (2006) were used to augment Barutçu (2007) and to provide a more complete version of Table 2.1.

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Table 2.1. Mobile marketing tools – definitions and potential uses

M-tool Definitions4 _{Potential use}

Mobile advertising

“m-advertising can be

defined as any paid message communicated by mobile media with the intent to influence the attitudes, intentions and

behavior of those addressed by the commercial messages” (Salo, 2004, p. 93).

-to spark consumers’ desire to request more information (Barutçu, 2007)

-to build brand awareness (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

-to increase word-of-mouth by providing an interesting (e.g. funny or very informative) advertisement (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006) Mobile

coupons

A mobile coupon is defined as a digital coupon “sent to a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, smart phone, or personal digital assistant (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008, p. 24)”.

-to have a more efficient sales promotion by offering a more discount voucher for a product that can be kept with the self at any point in time anywhere (Barutçu, 2007); or to have more efficient sales promotion by offering a coupon for a trial package (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

-to enhance brand loyalty by providing a discount to a target audience (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006) -to build a customer database – by providing a coupon only on condition of user registration (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

-dynamic targeting – by using location-based coupons (Luo, Andrews, Fang, & Phang, 2013)

-to increase word of mouth by providing a coupon that requires passing it on to another person before it can be redeemed (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

Mobile entertainment

Mobile entertainment comprises of a range of activities including but not limited to downloading ring tone, logo, music and movie; playing games, instant messaging, accessing location-based entertainment services, and Internet browsing (Wong & Hiew, 2005, p. 188)

- to create or change a brand image by introducing a game that builds that particular image (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006), e.g. innovative game for an image of an innovative company (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

- to build brand awareness (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

-to enhance brand loyalty (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

Location-based mobile services

“Location-based mobile services are the services in which the location of a person or an object is used to shape or focus the application or the service” (Barutçu, 2007, p. 29)

-to offer information with high relevance (e.g. there is a restaurant near the consumer) (Barutçu, 2007) -to offer highly relevant services (e.g. the consumer is looking for a car repair service near his/her location) (Barutçu, 2007)

Mobile internet

“When using the mobile internet, mobile users can have the same access to all web pages via mobile phone without computer (Barutçu, 2007, p. 29)”

-to build a customer database – by tracking user behavior on the firm’s webpage (Barutçu, 2007; Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

Mobile commerce

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) refers to any transactions, either direct or indirect, with a monetary value, implemented via a wireless telecommunication

Network (Ko, Kim, & Lee, 2009, p. 670).

-to increase sales, customer loyalty and to create a data-base by providing a new sales channel from which information can be stored and used to influence consumers in the future (Barutçu, 2007; Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006)

-to lower operational costs and increase consumer convenience (Barutçu, 2007)

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Mobile banking5

M-banking can be defined as a channel whereby the customer interacts with a bank via a mobile device, such as a mobile phone or personal digital assistant (PDA). The emphasis is on data communication, and in its strictest form m-banking does not include telephone banking, either in its traditional form of voice up, or through the form of dial-up to a service based on touch tone phones(Barnes & Corbitt, 2003, p. 3).

-permits companies and users to interact after the firm’s working hours (Barutçu, 2007)

Side note: this table does not capture the full range of uses, but is meant to provide a very useful delineation of each tool, its definition and its potential uses. In doing so, it is sufficient to show that 1) mobile marketing should not be used as a synonym to neither of these terms and 2) mobile tools could be used in different ways to achieve the overarching objective of mobile marketing – to build customer-firm relationships.

What is important here is that each of these has a separate definition and each tool is more appropriate for a specific relationship-building activity within mobile marketing. In other words, while the overarching purpose of mobile marketing is to build better customer relationships, there are different tools that are more suitable for specific activities, e.g. mobile ads could be useful in providing information (Barutçu, 2007) and building mobile brand awareness (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006); mobile games could provide entertainment and thus sustain loyalty (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006); and mobile coupons could increase sales and loyalty by acting as an inducer or reinforce of purchase behavior (Barutçu, 2007; Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006). In this way, it can be seen that mobile coupons are a mobile marketing tool but are conceptually and practically different from the overall concept of mobile marketing. Specifically, mobile marketing tools are used tofulfill the purpose of mobile marketing that is to build customer-firm relationships (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). However, coupons are practically different from the overall concept of mobile marketing (i.e. mobile marketing is not a synonym for mobile coupons) and from other marketing tools (e.g. mobile coupons are not mobile ads).

The next section addresses the key aspects of mobile coupons.

5_{Even though one could argue that mobile banking is a tool that can be used only by banks, the reasoning here is that}

companies could choose to accept or not to accept mobile transactions which turns them into companies that either use or do not use mobile banking (Barutçu, 2007)

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2.2. Pillar2: Mobile Couponing

In this section the history, use, typology and barriers to adoption of mobile coupons are discussed. 2.2.1. History and definition of Mobile Coupons

Herein the transition from traditional to e-coupons to m-coupons is explained. A traditional (paper) coupon has been defined as “a certificate that entitles the bearer to a certain price reduction on a specified product when the goods are purchased, and the retailer honours the discount” (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009, p. 223). This is different from store discounts because while everyone could benefit from a store discount, here only the holder of a coupon can take advantage of this promotion (Price & Connor, 2003). Jayasingh and Eze (2009) argue that coupons are one of the oldest marketing tools – existing over a 100 years. Their proliferation attests to the fact that they are one of the most effective sales promotion, inventory management and brand promotion instrument (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). However, traditional coupons also have two main limitations, namely: 1) difficulty in targeting those customers who would be especially interested in the promotion and 2) difficulty in use (people had to carry coupons on them all the time and redeem them at the point of purchase) (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009).

While traditional coupons still exist, one could easily see that the current norm is electronic coupons (e-coupons) (Blundo et al., 2005; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). These coupons are different from traditional coupons because they are distributed over the Internet (Blundo et al., 2005). Moreover, unlike paper coupons which could usually only be redeemed at the store’s location, e-coupons could be redeemed both online (e.g. web shop) and offline (e.g. at the store’s location) (Jakobsson, MacKenzie, & Stern, 1999). By offering the ability to collect user data online, e-coupons overcame the difficulty of targeting consumers who are likely to be interested in these offerings (challenge 1). Specifically, companies that issue e-coupons are able to identify and target selected consumers (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). Likewise, this helped partially overcome the second challenge by making coupons more user-friendly when shopping online (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). A user can store an e-coupon in his or her computer and access it upon shopping online (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). However, if the coupon needs to be redeemed at the location of the store, the second challenge still exists.

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Lastly, due to the development of mobile devices other than laptops, a new form of coupons – m-coupons have emerged (Shankar et al., 2010). A mobile coupon is defined as a “digital coupon sent to a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, smart phone, or personal digital assistant (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008, p. 24)”. Like e-coupons, m-coupons overcame the first challenge of traditional coupons by allowing companies to get even more data and profile their customers even better (due to the ability to know where a user is at any time – location-based tracking) (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). However, they also fully overcame the second challenge of traditional coupons because mobile devices could be taken to the store instead of the coupon itself (Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). Given that most consumers carry at least one mobile device when located outside of their homes, this implies that these coupons could be accessed and used very easily (Im & Ha, 2013). 2.2.2. Uses/functions

Due to the high fragmentation of the literature on mobile coupons it is extremely hard to delineate all the potential uses of m-coupons. Some of the applications, namely increasing sales promotion effectiveness (Barutçu, 2007; Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006), dynamic targeting (Luo et al., 2013), enhancing brand loyalty (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006), creating a database of existing users (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006), increasing word-of-mouth (Pousttchi & Wiedemann, 2006), are outlined in Table 2.1. in Sub-section 2.1.2. A few other potential uses are discussed below.

Another well documented use for coupons is to encourage the trial of new or unfamiliar products (Price & Connor, 2003). The idea is that the discount acts as an inducer of purchase behavior because it provides an incentive to try the product by reducing the risk of paying too much (Price & Connor, 2003). Moreover, it has been acknowledged that by providing a positive reward (e.g. certain level of quality of a product for a particular price), a coupon could discourage consumers from trying out competing products (Price & Connor, 2003). However, to accomplish these two functions, the coupon discount must be sufficiently large to be considered as a reward (Price & Connor, 2003).

Strategically, m-coupons could be used to capitalize on brand equity to increase brand market share or to defend existing market share (Price & Connor, 2003). Companies can either issue coupons to encourage a switch from a competitor brand to the focal brand or issue coupons to discourage existing customers from trying out the competitor brands. However, the ability to take

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advantage of this opportunity typically depends on the relevance of the brand for the customer (Price & Connor, 2003). In other words, not all brands have an equal ability to take advantage of coupons in this way.

In sum, mobile coupons have many potential applications. Some of these such as inducing customers to try out new products have remained stable over the last 100 years. Others, such as dynamic targeting and creating databases have only been possible due to the aforementioned transition from traditional paper coupons to mobile coupons.

2.2.3. Typology of coupons

Again due to the high fragmentation of the m-coupon literature various typologies of m-coupons have come to exist. Some of these typologies have focused on the content (Im & Ha, 2013) of the coupon or the distribution method (Achadinha et al., 2014), the mode of communication (Park et al., 2008).

According to the content classification one could discriminate between coupons (i) offering a discount of a product or a service, (ii) that allow a person to buy one product/service and get one free, and (iii) those that offer a free product (Im & Ha, 2013). According to the distribution type, one could distinguish between SMS, MMS, Bluetooth and other digital coupons (Achadinha et al., 2014) Lastly, according to mode of communication, one could distinguish between push and pull coupons (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). The former refer to coupons that are being pushed from the focal company to the consumer’s phones (unsolicited coupons) whereas the latter refers to coupons being pulled due to the customer’s own interest in the promotional offering (solicited) (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008).

2.2.4. Redemption rates and barriers to adoption of unsolicited coupons

Unsolicited mobile coupons have a relatively low redemption rate – only 10% as opposed to unsolicited paper-based coupons – 85% (Mersdorf, 2010). The logical question to be asked is why paper coupons have such a higher redemption rate as opposed to mobile/electronic coupons. One explanation could be that people have already opted-in to receive paper coupons indirectly (Price & Connor, 2003). For instance, the coupon could be placed in a magazine for which the consumer has subscribed (e.g. signing up for the economist but also getting some paper coupon discounts inside the magazine itself) which makes redemption more likely (Price & Connor, 2003).

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Another explanation could be that when a company sends a paper-based coupon a person cannot refuse receiving it (e.g. New York Pizza in the Netherlands sends clients paper coupons the day after they have made a purchase online to their physical address) (Achadinha et al., 2014). Thus, a person could choose to throw it away (not to redeem it) but cannot choose not to receive it as such an option was not presented to him or her (Achadinha et al., 2014). This is not possible in the mobile channel as there are severe privacy violation penalties (Achadinha et al., 2014).

A third explanation could be that people do not distinguish between coupons and advertisements in the mobile environment. Barutçu (2007) shows a moderate positive correlation between these two constructs in his measurements (r = 0.636, p < 0.01), which was one of the first indications that people are unable to delineate these tools clearly. No such correlations are found when discussing paper-based coupons and traditional ads which implies that this lack of differentiation between the instruments is most likely caused by the fact that both tools are distributed in the same manner – via a mobile device (Barutçu, 2007). This reasoning is in line with Shankar and Hollinger (2007) who report that all forms of mobile marketing communications with consumers are perceived as nearly equally intrusive. The explanation of this phenomenon is that mobile devices are considered more personal than any other device (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Shankar et al., 2010) and users are so afraid of being spammed that they do not differentiate between these different marketing tools. As a result, users are unlikely to accept receiving mobile coupons on their devices (i.e. to opt-in). Moreover, if a coupon is unsolicited/pushed, a person could automatically equate it to spam which violates privacy to an unacceptable level and thus causes no further interest in the coupon (Achadinha et al., 2014; Scharl et al., 2005). This most likely causes people to behave irrationally and to have a lower redemption rate for mobile coupons as opposed to paper coupons. The idea is that this behavior is irrational because a mobile coupon provides an actual economic benefit over other mobile marketing tools which usually do not (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). As a result, neoclassical economic theory would argue that a person would be better off if he/she accepts the coupon because the person with the coupon (solicited or unsolicited) is better offer compared to the person with no discount coupon.

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An alternative explanation that has not been empirically tested could be generated by applying a cost-benefit framework introduced by Ailawadi, Neslin, and Gedenk (2001). In a study, Konuş, Verhoef, and Neslin (2008) use such as cost-benefit framework and model channel selection as a function of the utilities of different channels. If the costs of using a particular channel exceed the benefits, then a person is considered unlikely to use the particular channel (Konuş et al., 2008). Following this logic, one could argue that the reason for lower adoption rates of mobile coupons is not that consumers do not distinguish them from other mobile tools, but rather that the utility of using mobile coupons does not exceed the cost of using mobile coupons (Konuş et al., 2008). For instance, one could think that saving €10 is not equally valuable or more valuable than the cost of having to deal with (additional) intrusive messages (Konuş et al., 2008). In other words, this explanation goes against the one provided by Barutçu (2007) as it could be argued that people are rational in understanding that the coupon has a value from which they could benefit. However, this value is not significantly high to overcome the cost of using this coupon and thus to emit the desired response – to redeem the coupon. On the other hand, from economics perspective, one could argue that choosing not to receive €10 in order to avoid getting unsolicited m-coupons is irrational by itself as the cost of sending a coupon is born by the sender, and what the receiver perceives as a cost is a perception rather than an actual cost (Scharl et al., 2005). Moreover, it is explained that the only real cost for the user is that without choosing to receive it, he or she must pay the full retail instead of a discounted price (Scharl et al., 2005)..

The main takeaway of this section is that push mobile coupons have a lower redemption rate than traditional push paper-based coupons. Moreover, there seems to be a degree of irrationality in using mobile coupons. This irrationality element implies that consumer irrationality theories could be used to deal with this irrationality problem. This reasoning is in line with Lamberton and Stephen (2015) who argue that social and psychology theories represent a very promising approach to dealing with contemporary mobile marketing issues.

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Table 2.2. Mobile coupons summary

Definition Functions Typology Barriers

A mobile coupon is defined as a “digital coupon sent to a mobile device, such as a mobile phone, smart phone, or personal digital assistant (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008, p. 24)”.

encourage the trial of new or unfamiliar products (Price & Connor, 2003). a coupon could

discourage consumers from trying out competing products (Price &

Connor, 2003). content classification: (i) product/service discount (ii) buy-one-get-one-free coupons

(iii) get a free product (Im & Ha, 2013).

No way of opting in indirectly and ability to refuse coupons (Price & Connor, 2003)

m-coupons could be used to capitalize on brand equity to increase brand market share or to defend existing market share (Price & Connor, 2003).

distribution classification:

(i) SMS, (ii) MMS (iii) Bluetooth (iv) and other digital coupons (Achadinha et al., 2014)

Inability to distinguish coupons from ads leads to low willingness to accept and use (Barutçu, 2007)

m-coupons could be used to capitalize on brand equity to increase brand market share or to defend existing market share (Price & Connor, 2003).

mode of communication classification:

(i) pull/solicited (ii) push/unsolicited (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008).

Benefits < costs (Konuş et al., 2008)

The next section examines what models have been used to study m-coupons and debunks some misconceptions about them in other studies.

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2.3. Pillar3: Models used to study mobile coupon adoption

In this section, the models that are used to influence the acceptance of mobile coupons are discussed. My review of the mobile coupon literature indicates that scholars do not always have a full understanding of these models and thus they have made false claims. Therefore, it is crucial to make such misconceptions widely known and to debunk these because they could have biased not only some of the readers of these journals, but also some of the mobile marketing scholars who have a weaker understanding of cognitive psychology theories.

2.3.1. Models

When studying the adoption of mobile coupons, scholars have primarily used three theories and their modifications, namely the theory of reasoned action (TRA), the technology acceptance model (TAM) and theory of planned behavior (TPB) (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Eze, 2010; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009).Prior to applying these theories to mobile coupons, scholars used them to predict and explain the overall adoption of mobile marketing (Barutçu, 2007; Scharl et al., 2005; Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). Therefore, it should not be considered surprising that there was a spillover effect from the models used in studying general mobile marketing to studying mobile coupons.

2.3.2. Misconceptions

Even in top quality (A-rated) peer-reviewed journals such as the Journal of Interactive Marketing articles show lack of awareness of the aforementioned models, their history and their relationship to other models; some articles even demonstrate a lack of familiarity with the relationships in the model which they are describing. For instance in one article of the above-mentioned top journal, Shankar and Balasubramanian (2009) state that “unlike the TRA, the TAM allows perceived usefulness and ease of use to directly drive adoption, reflecting the notion that a positive attitude may not be required for adoption to occur” (p.119). Basically, this represents a criticism on the TRA model stating that TAM unlike TRA acknowledges that positive attitudes are not always required to increase adoption. Then, the authors go onto explaining how TAM2 represents an even superior version of this TAM which includes perceived control and pressures from social groups (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). However, if one is familiar with the TRA model, they would immediate realize that this criticism is not very well supported.

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2.3.3. Debunking misconceptions

In a nutshell, TRA which was introduced in 1975 by Fishbein and Azjen argues that a person’s attitude and subjective norms influence his or her intention to perform a behavior, which subsequently influences the probability of performing the actual behavior (Armitage & Christian, 2003). Then, TRA was extended by adding perceived behavioral control as a third independent predictor of intentions to perform an action (the mediator) and as a direct predictor of behavior (the dependent variable) by Azjen himself in 1988. This model became known as the theory of planned behavior (Armitage & Christian, 2003). The reader can find a visual representation of this model in Figure 2.2. below.

Figure 2.2. The Theory of Planned Behavior; Adapted from Armitage and Christian (2003)

While these theories were used to examine consumer behavior, the TAM model was introduced in 1989 and excluded the impact of social norms and perceived behavioral control (PCB). Specifically, its creators state “TAM, introduced by Davis (1986), is an adaptation of TRA specifically tailored for modeling user acceptance of information systems” (Davis, Bagozzi, & Warshaw, 1989, p. 985). From there, to improve the explanation power of the TAM Model, the concepts of social norms was introduced under TAM2 (Davis et al., 1989).

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In sum, the claim that TAM2 was superior because it included the impact of social norms while TRA did not is completely untrue as TRA was the first model to consider the impact of social norms as a separate predictor variable (Armitage & Christian, 2003). This short discussion illustrates that even peer-reviewed journal articles could contain misconceptions that have to be dealt with in order to avoid providing practitioners and other scholars with biased results.

2.3.4. Moving away from standard models

A few researchers understood that blindly re-applying these existing models to m-coupons does not produce the models with the highest explanatory power (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Im & Ha, 2013; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). In what is probably the most influential study on the topic of m-coupons, Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008) state: “to explain consumer use of mobile coupons, we depart from the Technology Acceptance Model, by including essential variables that specifically relate to the mobile service/coupon context (p.25)”. This approach was then followed by Jayasingh and Eze (2009) who claim that “in the mobile technology context, traditional adoption models such as TAM could be applied, but need modification and extension in order to increase their prediction and explanation power (p.228)”. These visionary researchers have understood that models from psychology literature (e.g. TRA and TPB) and technology acceptance (TAM) are limited in their usefulness and other important variables need to be considered.

In sum, this section outlined the key theory that is used to explain consumer behavior - theory of reasoned action (TRA). This theory has then been adjusted to improve its explanation power into the TPB and TAM, and their subsequent variations. An example was given as to how researchers have sometimes made false claims about these models – e.g. TRA does not include social norms (Shankar & Balasubramanian, 2009). Most importantly however, this review should have shown the importance of moving away from the original models and adjusting them to fit the mobile coupon context.

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2.4. Pillar4: Existing relationships between variables

In this section, the known relationships and the research gap are introduced. This information is then used in Chapter 3 to support the development of my conceptual model and hypotheses. 2.4.1. Attitudes, social norms, perceived control and intention to redeem m-coupons

Firstly, it is worthwhile mentioning that the TRA, TAM, TPB all measure the impact of attitudes and other variables on behavioral intentions (Armitage & Christian, 2003; Eze, 2010). Currently, most studies in the mobile coupons domain have operationalized this behavior intentions variable as the intention/willingness to redeem/use a coupon (Achadinha et al., 2014; Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Eze, 2010; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). Thus, scholars have tested the impact of attitude, social norms, perceived control (PCB), their antecedents and other coupon-specific variables to explain consumers’ intentions to redeem mobile coupons (Achadinha et al., 2014; Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Eze, 2010; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). The overall finding of these studies is that attitude towards using coupons is the strongest predictor of intentions to redeem a coupon (Achadinha et al., 2014; Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Eze, 2010; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). Likewise, these studies show that the predictive power of perceived behavioral control is very low (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009) and the impact of social norms is insignificant (Achadinha et al., 2014; Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). For instance, Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008) show that attitude towards using m-coupons has the highest predictive power (β = 0.748, p < .05) while perceived control was not nearly as strong in predicting behavior intentions (β = 0.111, p < .05). In addition, Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008) demonstrate that the impact of social norms on intentions to redeem m-coupons is insignificant (β = -.003, p > .05). In support of this result, it is explained that social norms represent forms of peer-pressure whose salience increases with highly visible and image-sensitive products. At the same time, coupons have low level of visibility (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). The same pattern can be observed in Achadinha et al. (2014). Overall, the results of these studies prove that attitude towards using mobile coupons has the strongest impact on intentions to redeem these m-coupons. Specifically, the more positive one’s attitude towards using mobile coupons, the higher the intentions to redeem a mobile coupon.

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At the same time, these studies have included other coupon-specific variables which helped increase the explanatory power of their models. This suggests that simply re-applying TAM, TRA or TPB in this context does not produce the models with the highest explanatory power (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). Rather, academics are advised to consider other economic, demographic and psychological variables (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). Therefore, I exclude the impact of social norms from my model because other researchers have not found support for the hypothesis that this variable influences intentions to redeem mobile coupons (Achadinha et al., 2014; Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Eze, 2010; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). Likewise, I argue that by including perceived control as an independent variable, Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008) have made an implicit assumption that users can always choose whether to receive a mobile coupon or not. I find this to be a methodological weakness6 of the study because when it comes to push coupons, perceived control does not exist (i.e. one cannot limit the amount of pushed SMS coupons received on his or her smartphone). Specifically, Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008) argue that “consumers are worried that they lose track of the companies that send them offers, the amount of offers they will receive, and the time when they receive them” (p. 34). For them, this argument suffices as a reason to include the variable in their model (Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008). Given that in the push context such control is impossible, this limits the validity of the authors’ findings7. To avoid using a variable that is not appropriate for push coupons, which are the focus of this study (Section 3.2.), PCB is also excluded. Nevertheless, I follow the general advice by Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008) and I look for psychological, demographic and economic variables that could increase the explanatory power of my model.

In summary, attitude is the strongest predictor of intentions/willingness to redeem mobile coupons (Achadinha et al., 2014; Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008; Eze, 2010; Jayasingh & Eze, 2009). However, what is measured in the aforementioned studies is attitude towards using m-coupons rather than towards receiving m-coupons. The next sub-section provides more insights into why measuring attitudes towards m-coupons alone and operationalizing behavioral intentions as intentions to redeem a m-coupon might be only partially methodologically correct.

6_{The reader should keep this criticism in mind as in the discussion some differences between push and pull coupons}

are outlined. Moreover, as it becomes apparent in section 3.2., this study tests hypotheses about push coupons.

7_{The authors may have explicitly stated that their findings are only valuable for solicited mobile coupons. However,}

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2.4.2. Attitude and intention to accept m-coupons

While the aforementioned studies examined the impact of people’s attitude towards using m-coupons on the redemption intentions of m-m-coupons, Watson, McCarthy, and Rowley (2013) were among the first to examine how attitudes towards receiving different marketing communication (e.g. coupons, alerts from websites, and others) influenced acceptance of these tools. This study is inherently different from the studies described in the previous section because the researchers measure attitude towards receiving a mobile coupon as opposed to the person’s attitude towards using m-coupons. Likewise, Watson et al. (2013) operationalize behavior intentions as willingness to accept the coupon (i.e. acceptance rate) as well as intentions to redeem mobile coupons rather than the intention to redeem the coupon alone.

The researchers find that 87.2% of their sample either agrees or strongly agrees that receiving text messages (e.g. text messages containing a discount coupon) would be annoying (Watson et al., 2013). Of those, about 56.3% either agree or strongly agree that they would not accept to receive mobile coupons (Watson et al., 2013). Similarly, 62.6% of their sample either agrees or strongly agrees that they would not use mobile coupons. In other words, these findings suggest that people have an overall negative attitude towards receiving m-coupons and are not willing to accept and use them (Watson et al., 2013).

The results observed by Watson et al. (2013) directly oppose the results by Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008). On the one hand, Dickinger and Kleijnen (2008) show that people generally have positive attitudes towards using m-coupons which increases consumers’ willingness to use them. However, Watson et al. (2013) shows that attitudes towards receiving m-coupons are quite negative and thus over 50% of their sample is not willing to accept them on their mobile devices and 62.5% is not willing to use them. This suggests that it is possible that attitude towards receiving mobile coupons and attitude towards using mobile coupons have different effects on behavioral intentions. I was unable to find a study which tries to resolve this issue. As a result, I propose “moving away from standard models” by studying the impact of both attitudes, namely attitude towards receiving and attitude towards using m-coupons on willingness to accept and use mobile coupons.

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In addition, it is worth mentioning that behavioral intentions were operationalized as willingness to redeem a mobile coupon and/or willingness to receive a mobile coupon. While Watson et al. (2013) have studied the impact of attitude towards receiving mobile coupons on both variables individually, the potential relationship between the two intentions i.e. willingness to use and willingness to receive was not tested. Therefore, I propose that the potential relationships between both attitudes and behavioral intentions are examined together. In this way it could be established which of the two attitude, namely attitude towards receiving or attitude towards using m-coupons has a stronger effect on each of the two behavioral intentions (willingness to use and willingness to receive mobile coupons). In turn, this could produce valuable findings regarding the attitude-intention relationship. For instance, it would be logical to expect that attitude towards receiving may have a higher impact on willingness to receive mobile coupons.

2.4.3. Demographics and willingness to accept coupons

It is argued that differences in demographic characteristics have an impact on willingness to accept mobile coupons (Varnali & Toker, 2010). Therefore, age, gender, education and nationality are considered to be valuable covariates for any study in the mobile domain (Varnali & Toker, 2010). Thus, the effect of the aforementioned control variables is also taken into account into this research paper.

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2.4.4. Changing attitudes

As discussed in Sub-section 2.4.2.., attitudes towards receiving m-coupons are argued to be extremely important in determining the willingness to accept an m-coupon (Watson et al., 2013). The overall conclusion of Watson et al. (2013) is that a pre-existing negative attitude towards receiving m-coupons could almost never lead to an increased willingness to accept m-coupons. The authors suggest that this would only be possible if the effects of other independent variables which have a stronger effect than attitude is taken into account (Watson et al., 2013). However, since the effect of attitude towards receiving mobile coupons is much stronger compared to other predictors, Watson et al. (2013) suggest focusing on improving the antecedents of those attitudes as the only way to improve existing attitudes and thus willingness to accept m-coupons. This finding is in line with Achadinha et al., 2014 and Dickinger & Kleijnen, 2008 who state that since positive attitude has the highest prediction power, researchers should focus on examining the antecedents of attitudes, find ways to improve these in order to increase the intention to accept and use mobile coupons. For instance, Watson et al. (2013) found that convenience and discount size positively affect attitude towards receiving m-coupons (they are antecedents of attitude towards receiving). Thus, the advice derived from their empirical work is that if one is not willing to use a mobile coupon, companies should try to make redemption more convenient or should increase the discount size (Watson et al., 2013).

However, if it can be shown that consumers are willing to redeem m-coupons even if they have a pre-existing negative attitude without any change in its antecedents, this would mean that the inherent assumption that the only way to increase willingness to accept and redeem coupons is by generating positive attitudes by improving their antecedents could be flawed in itself. This is a crucial distinction the value of which should not be undermined. At first sight the aforementioned advice that companies should focus on improving the antecedents of attitude towards receiving seems to offer a lot of merit. However, a question to be asked is what would happen if a company has already made its mobile coupons easily redeemable and people still do not want to use them. Does it mean that it should start giving away products by increasing discount size to levels that are not economically feasible for a company? Therefore, given that attitude is argued to be such a strong predictor, finding an alternative way to improve it (i.e. not through its antecedents) could offer valuable academic as well as practical insights to improving m-coupon adoption rates.

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In a study Ariely et al. (2006) demonstrate that they can manipulate the willingness to attend a poetry recital by changing people’s attitudes towards a poetry reading experience. Particularly, they suggest that when a person does not have a pre-established attitude (i.e. it is neutral), it can be manipulated to form an either positive or a negative attitude (Ariely et al., 2006). In the literature, this effect has been referred to as anchoring that produces attitude change (Blankenship, Wegener, Petty, Detweiler-Bedell, & Macy, 2008; Wegener, Petty, Detweiler-Bedell, & Jarvis, 2001). The basic premise is that an anchor could be used to change someone’s attitude to be either more favorable or less favorable thus biasing their subsequent judgments in the desired direction (Blankenship et al., 2008; Wegener et al., 2001). Here’s one explanation of how this process is likely to work:

Anchoring is considered to be a judgmental heuristic (Tversky & Kahneman, 1974) which involves two subsequent judgments, namely: a comparative one and an absolute one (Mussweiler & Strack, 2000). Mussweiler and Strack (2000) argue that in the comparative judgment task, the target object needs to be compared with the anchor. For instance, in the poetry recital study, Ariely et al. (2006) asked their respondents if they would either be willing to pay or to accept $2 to attend a poetry recital. This is an arbitrary number based on which respondents indicate their willingness to attend the event. What happens is that people immediately compare their willingness to attend on the basis of either receiving $2 dollars or paying 2$. What participants don’t realize is that this question frames them into a particular mindset that influences the answer to the second question in the second judgement phase. Specifically, in this second judgment phase, namely the absolute judgment phase, an absolute value of the same dimension has to be provided (Mussweiler & Strack, 2000). In the aforementioned example, at this phase participants are asked about their willingness to attend the poetry recital for free (i.e. now participants neither have to pay nor have to be paid). Accordingly, for any rational person, the first question should have had no impact on one’s desire to attend a poetry reading which is free. In other words, whether people are asked if they would be willing to receive or pay 2$ should have no impact on their willingness to attend the recital when it is absolutely free.

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However, Ariely et al. (2006) shows that asking people whether they would be willing to pay or to receive a payment changes their subsequent attitude and thus their willingness to attend the event. Specifically, people who are asked whether they would pay to attend the event (the anchor in the comparative stage) form a positive attitude towards the event (since participants must pay for it, it must be something they will enjoy – a positive experience8_{) and thus are more willing to}

attend it once it becomes free and vice-versa. This example shows how an entirely arbitrary question could change the direction of a person’s attitude from non-existent (or neutral) to either positive or negative and thus influence willingness to attend a poetry recital when it is free. The irrational part is that the poetry recital itself does not change and the increased willingness to attend is the result of the arbitrary anchoring question.

2.5. Research gap and research question

It is known that negative consumer attitudes towards receiving m-coupons decrease the intentions of consumer to accept mobile coupons (Watson et al., 2013). The implication is that marketers should focus on improving the antecedents of these consumers’ attitudes towards receiving m-coupons in order to eliminate the negative perceptions of m-m-coupons and thus increase willingness to accept and redeem these coupons (Watson et al., 2013). Moreover, it is known that once an attitude is established, it is considered quite difficult to change it and thus the willingness to accept a mobile coupon on one’s mobile device is also difficult to change (Watson et al., 2013). However, there may be certain conditions under which consumers could irrationally have an increased willingness to accept mobile coupons by changing their pre-existing negative attitudes into positive attitudes (Ariely et al., 2006). In other words, it is not known if the concept of anchoring could be stretched further in the context of mobile coupons to change consumers’ pre-existing

negative attitudes to more positive attitudes and thus increase willingness to accept m-coupons

(i.e. willingness to opt in). This would be irrational because while willingness to accept coupons might increase as a result of the effect of anchoring, the actual m-coupon would not change.If this claim is true, this would mean that people who have a negative attitude towards receiving m-coupons at first could become more willing to receive them as anchoring changes the direction of their attitude. Such results would have substantial consumer behavior and marketing implications.

8_{According to Ariely et al. (2006) one possible explanation of this effect is that people have a general tendency to}

pay for things that they enjoy – i.e. going on vacation, buying a place to live, eating outside, and would like to be paid for doing unpleasant things e.g. going to work.

Willingness to accept mobile coupons : do pre-existing attitudes towards m-coupons really matter?