Abstract

With the rapid growth of mobile phone use, mobile advertising has increasingly become a powerful tool for marketers to reach targeted consumers worldwide. This study investigates how attitude, trust, and privacy concerns influence mobile advertising effectiveness in a cross-cultural context including China and the U.S. Our results show much similarity between Chinese and American consumers. Overall, in both countries, we found that beliefs about mobile advertising significantly influence consumers’ attitudes toward mobile advertising, which in turn influence the intention to use mobile advertising and purchase intention. Specifically, perceived informational usefulness, perceived entertainment usefulness and perceived ease of use emerged as significant predictors for consumers’ attitudes toward mobile advertising. Perceived social usefulness is a significant predictor among Chinese consumers but not among Americans. In both markets, trust positively and significantly influences attitudes, whereas privacy concerns are a significant negative influencing factor.