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TopBackground To The Study
Advancement in the smartphone technology has presented increasing opportunities for organizations to be constantly within the reach of their consumers anywhere and anytime, through application software popularly known as mobile apps (McStay, 2010). Propelled by the mobile apps technology, marketing organizations are further presented with more opportunities to engage in In-app advertising. This is the current and fastest growing form of advertising apart from SMS, and In-app advertisements are usually in the push form, also known as intrusive advertising (Truong & Simmons, 2010). Li, Edwards and Lee (2002) defined intrusiveness as a psychological reaction to advertisements that interfere with the consumers’ current cognitive process. Intrusive advertisements are designed to gain attention and are pushed towards the audience unrequested, usually through their smartphones (Fakhir, 2017; Zhang & Mao, 2016). Advertisers and developers use this form of advertising in pulling consumers to their website in exchange for free applications (Le & Nguyen, 2014). A pertinent issue however is the response of smartphone users to these intrusive advertisements as response can be a measure of the effectiveness of the intrusive advertisements.
According to Heinonem and Strandvic (2007), responsiveness as a measure of advertisement effectiveness is the consumers’ willingness to receive and respond to marketing communication and this response can be viewed as a function of the content and context of the message. Such response can take the form of brand favourability, purchase intention, advertising awareness, willingness to receive SMS advertisement, passing the advertised brand to others and searching for brand information (Lin, Paragas & Bantista, 2016; Riquelme, Rios & Al Enezi, 2012). Researchers have sought to understand the perception of advertisement value and factors that influence response of consumers to intrusive advertisements, especially among the youths based on the fact that in most countries smartphone penetration is highest among the 18 to 24 year-olds (Deloitte, 2017; Statista, 2020a).
An early study by Ducoffe (1995) among 284 university students in USA proposed and tested a conceptual model which showed that the perceived value of an advertisement which determines consumer response, is significantly influenced by the informativeness and entertainment of such advertisement. Two decades after, Goodrich, Schiller and Galletta(2015) in a study among 1,467 students in USA who were at least 18 years old, observed that participants perceived advertisements as less intrusive when their contents are informative and humorous. However, attitude towards In-app advertisement can vary according to the app category. This was noted by Logan (2017) in an online investigation of 156 participants between 18 and 34 years old. The study reported that most participants were comfortable with In-app advertisements when encountered in apps for assistance and informational purposes, but less favourable in video and music apps.
Using qualitative approach, Bhave, Jain and Roy (2013) also sought to understand the interaction of Indian youths with mobile applications and their attitude towards In-app advertising. Findings showed that attitude towards In-app advertising was influenced by factors such as relevance of advertisement, credibility, permission, personalization, incentives, control, contextualization, as well as hindrance caused by the advertisement. Moreover, a study carried out by Shin et al. (2020) among smartphone users between 12 and 19 years old in Singapore, reported that restrictive parental mediation had a positive impact on adolescents’ response to In-app advertisements, while normative peer influence also enhanced a more favourable attitude towards the advertisements.