The research has indicated that geolocation technology may not be as warmly received as some anticipated.
A nonprofit global IT association, ISACA, has just released the outcomes of its location based marketing survey and has discovered that many consumers are uncomfortable with this type of communication as they are concerned about their privacy.
The study looked into the opinions of approximately 4,000 consumers in four different countries.
The research was conducted regarding the holiday shopping habits of consumers in the United Kingdom, the United States, Mexico, and India and their opinions on privacy and other issues such as location based marketing through the use of geolocation technology. The findings indicated that the feelings regarding the use of these techniques differ from one place to another.
The consumers in the United Kingdom and India had the greatest resistance to location based marketing techniques.
In those two countries, the respondents were the least likely to want to receive advertising and promotional messages from stores and brands through the geolocation technology on their smartphones. These included unrequested discount coupons, SMS messages about discount offers, and other communications that are sent automatically when a consumer walks near – or into – a store. In both the U.K. and India, 70 percent of consumers felt that they felt that this type of activity is invasive.
In all four of the participating countries, the data on the IT Risk/Reward Barometer indicated that consumers feel that receiving a text message from a business as they walk by the store is nearly as invasive as if they were to step into a store and a clerk would address them by name even if they had never met. In the U.K., 69 percent of the survey participants would have been happy to receive a mobile coupon in order to receive a bargain, but 47 percent of them would not be pleased if a shop assistant who was a stranger addressed them by name.
Among all of the countries, consumers were more receptive of receiving special discount codes through location based marketing than they were in receiving a text to inform them of special offers that may not feel are relevant to them.
A great deal of money is flowing into location based advertising for smartphones and there are many reasons why.
According to the latest reports in the mobile marketing environment, companies are continuing to pour their money into geolocation based efforts because it is proving to be worth every dollar spent.
Advertising over mobile using location based techniques promises surgical targeting, high conversion rates, and consumer data.
According to many reports, these goals for targeting, conversion rates, and rich customer profiles are delivering when it comes to geolocation. Therefore, companies that have already started using this type of mobile marketing are pouring more into it, and those that haven’t yet started are scrambling to begin.
Geolocation based mobile marketing techniques take in a number of different types of efforts.
It includes everything from geofencing to geoaware ad campaigns, hyper local keyword optimizing, and offering Wi-Fi hotspots. Among the most common consumer targets are bargain hunters, moms, coffee enthusiasts, and others.
BI Intelligence recently released a mobile marketing report that looked at geolocation and the progress that it is making in the industry as well as the success that it is achieving for its users. It determined that location based advertising can help in everything from encouraging consumers to buy to building customer profiles that are dense with useful purchasing behavior and preference information.
Among the reasons that geolocation is a growing leader in mobile marketing are the following:
• Geolocation is the equivalent to cookies on the standard web. Location based marketing offers the ability to collect data that can be used to provide consumers with relevant information that is more appropriate to their preferences and behaviors. This is important as many mobile devices do not support third party cookies.
• Money is being made from the money spent on Geolocation. For that reason, the majority of companies that have not started these campaigns are planning to, and those that already are using them are boosting their spending. This was discovered by Balihoo and Berg Insight.
• Geolocation provides consumers with the information they want and need to make informed shopping decisions that are relevant to them no matter where they happen to be.
