Personal Data Collection and Usage for Mobile Marketing. Customer Awareness and Perception

Abstract

Marketers have often relied on data to better understand the preferences of the customer base. Whilethe traditional methods were engaged in the retrieval of data, the mobile devices connected to the internetintroduced an influx of data on a real time called big data. Based on this advancement, marketers with thetechnical capacity are able to identify customer needs accurately and identify sway in trends. Although thisstrategy seems beneficial to the marketers, the naïve nature of the customers to the collection and usage ofpersonal online information for mobile marketing remains a crucial poser. Hence, this study through surveysought to identify the awareness level and perception of 700 undergraduates in three higher institutions inLagos, Nigeria. Results show that all the respondents had connected mobile devices, received advertisingmessages on their devices and were active shoppers online. Furthermore, the females were more aware of thecollection and usage of personal data, hence, they embraced the collection based on relevance of advertisingmessages and strict use for mobile marketing. This study therefore recommended marketers’ collection andusage of customers’ personal data to be based on strict use for mobile marketing and assurance of relevance ofadvertising messages.