Acceptance of mobile advertising by consumers in public service institutions in Lagos, Nigeria

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the acceptance of mobile advertising by consumers in public service institutions in Lagos Nigeria from the perspective of non-permission-based nature of advertising practice in Nigeria. Design/methodology/approach – Guided by the theory of reasoned action, data were collected from 389 respondents in a sample survey using a structured questionnaire, and the variables were measured on ordinal scale. Findings – The respondents reported that the mobile advertising is informative; they also strongly agreed that the media is ubiquitous but irritating. Attitude of consumers towards mobile advertising, behavioural control and subjective norm have correlations with acceptance. Irritation and informativeness significantly and positively predicted acceptance of mobile advertising, while credibility and ubiquity predicted acceptance of the technology negatively. Age has a negative relationship with acceptance; both gender (male =1) and tertiary education have a significant relationship with acceptance of mobile advertising just as marital status. Research limitations/implications – The study focused only on public service mobile consumers in Lagos, Nigeria. Practical implications – Mobile adverts are ubiquitous in Nigeria, but consumers do not trust or use the adverts, although they consider them informative. The telecomm regulatory body needs to control deployment of mobile technologies for produce and service ads, so that ads will be subject to individual choices and discretion, and thereby reducing the ubiquity and increase the trust consumers have on the strategy. Social implications – There is hype that mobile advert has penetrated Nigerian market, but the strategy is not credulous to the people. Originality/value – There is no study focusing on the acceptance of this ad strategy in the public service sector in Nigeria.