‘Customerization’ – An Innovation in Mobile Marketing

Innovation creates marketing opportunities and challenges. The mobile platform market has witnessed this scenario in the recent past. This sector  has seen a plethora of smart phones like iPhones and Androids being launched across the globe. There has also been a steady rise in the popularity of mobile websites and applications. Globally, each has an adoption rate of 83 percent and 71 percent, respectively. The recent past has seen robust growth in social media applications which have been recognised and integrated in many smart phone appliances. Eighty-five percent of teens in the age group of 15-18 are expected to yield mobile phones and therefore the most effective way to communicate with this group is through mobile marketing. The broader set of the audience could also be tapped through this new mode of marketing since almost everyone has a cellphone.

Globally, businesses have spent approximately USD 2.3 million on making their businesses more compatible on the mobile platform. In 2011, this expenditure is expected to catapult to USD 5.5 billion. Interestingly, by this period, the Mobile Marketing Association expects digital marketing expenditure on the whole to go up by two percent to 32 percent. Of this spend, approximately four percent is expected to be allocated to mobile advertising.

An interesting study conducted by a management institute in India revealed that Mobile Marketing is at a relatively nascent stage in India. Here, the biggest challenge is the acceptance of consumer marketing/advertising. Researchers have analysed the perception of the consumers in India and have categorised these perceptions as follows:

• Lack of contextualization and personalization of mobile ads
• Disruptive nature of mobile ads, and
• Perceived usefulness of mobile ads

Further, in India, the existing format of mobile marketing does not have any significant impact on the likelihood of purchase. Customers are averse to the generalised nature of the mobile adverts and expect customization of mobile marketing messages as per their individual requirements, tastes and preferences. This trait has clearly indicated the need for Customerization in mobile marketing/advertising in India. Customerization combines operationally driven mass customization with customized marketing in a way that the company is able to respond to individual customers by customizing its products, services, and messages on a one-to-one basis. In a nutshell, the marketing firms need to combine Mass Customization and Customized Marketing.  This is what Customerization means. Another desired attribute as per consumer perception is the preference for session-based messages, which would self delete after a certain period of time – hence saving the mobile users the hassle of clearing the clutter of marketing messages in their inboxes, which would otherwise occupy unnecessary memory space. Ideally the best way to achieve this would be to deploy Intelligent Mobile Software Agents, which enable firms to completely customize mobile marketing messages to individual customer preferences. This could be coupled with artificial intelligence which enables software agents to learn, optimize and individualize information dissemination to mobile users. As much as the theory sounds interesting, it would be fascinating to know how companies would execute this supposedly success formula.