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= Mobile marketing = A great number of consumers prefer to use mobile devices as their primary way to access the world wide web. . The smartphone, serving as a mini-computer, enables people to seek information, learn skills, go shopping, share photos and communicate with others. It is found that searches on Google tend to be performed on mobile phones by a large number of people (how many is large?), social media is used mostly on smartphones and increasingly purchases are generated directly or indirectly on mobile devices. This enables mobile marketing to become an increasingly crucial part of a company’s promotion and publicity strategy.

When it comes to the digital channels for purchasing activity, although e-commerce on desktop or laptop computers is completely well-established, m-commerce on mobile devices is developing fast and is supposed to lead the future of retailers. In the second quarter of 2016, time spent on digital shopping with mobiles took up 70 percent, which has shown the mobile’s significant influence on digital purchasing.

The advantages of mobile marketing
Firstly, along with the development of mobile technology, smartphones became absolutely necessary in most people’s daily routine. The majority of smartphone users would be faced with great stress if they are separated from their phones. So mobile phones are always with customers. Besides, mobile phones are always on and are easy to be connected, which allows a convenient environment for vendors and customers to intercommunicate constantly. As information could be delivered to consumers in a short time through mobile devices, retailers are able to carry out special marketing campaigns flexibly based on festivals, current events, weather conditions or competitors’ activities.

Secondly, due to the advanced techniques such as GPS, RFID and GSM, mobile devices became the main carrier for location-based advertising(LBA). Location-based advertising (LBA) used to be static and were recognised as some pieces of paper that posted on the billboards on some special roadsides. However, it now has become specific messages sent by marketers to consumers through mobile phones. Through location-based service, advertising massages could be delivered to the target audience at an appropriate time in an exactly right place, which helps to maximize the advertising effect. For instance, the famous restaurant chain, Pizza Hut, adopted a strategy to target consumers located within half a mile of its locations and to send promotion messages to them. It was surprisingly found that this location-based advertising strategy was 2.6 times more effective than the use of the ad displayed online.

Thirdly, as the time for big data is coming, a customer’s purchase history, site visits, demographic features, social media information and usage behaviour could be all collected by marketers. Through these data, marketers are capable of analysing and summarising the different preference of different consumers. Then, according to the different preference, they could customise personalised messages to each customer at any time. There is no denying that it is a more efficient way than the normal adds, which could attract more target audience. Furthermore, under the circumstances, it is very likely that sales would be increased since there exits a growing tendency of impulse buying. People used to do online shopping on the computer. It always took a long time for searching, comparing and selecting, which was of low efficiency. However, now an appealing personalised ad received when you just go through a special store would possibly make you enter the store and make an impulse purchase.