How mobile advertising works: The role of trust in improving attitudes and recall

How does trust affect consumer attitudes and recall in mobile advertising? This study
explores this question by conducting a large-scale "pseudo" mobile advertising
campaign in Japan. Two "real" brands (one durable and one nondurable good) of
major Japanese manufacturers were used as study stimuli. Using a push messaging
service, both a campaign message and a subsequent questionnaire for each brand
were sent to 40,000 opt-in mobile users. Five primary constructs were examined:
brand trust, mobile advertising trust, attitude toward brand, attitude toward mobile
advertising, and mobile campaign recall. Findings suggest that a mobile campaign's
recall largely depends on perceptions of both the medium and the advertised content,
and that the effects of mobile advertising trust on attitude toward mobile advertising
were stronger than those of other relationships. The path from attitude toward brand
to mobile campaign recall was notably and statistically stronger for the durable good
sample than for the nondurable good sample. Only in the durable good sample is
attitude toward brand a mediating variable in linking attitude toward mobile advertising
and mobile campaign recall. This study offers a basic but useful research framework
for a mobile-based online survey.