eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

Objectives of the Study:

The aim of this thesis is to find out why do retailers adopt some mobile marketing innovations and why do they not adopt other mobile marketing innovations. A second objective is to identify differences in the factors affecting adoption between retail corporations and smaller chain stores.

Academic background and methodology:

A literature review of organizational innovation adoption theory was done to form the framework for the empirical study. The empirical data for this study was collected with semi-structured interviews. The interviewees were in charge of their company's mobile marketing. The companies they worked for are among the biggest retailers in Finland.

Findings and conclusions:

The findings suggest that retail corporations have a different set of factors that affect their mobile marketing adoption compared to smaller chain stores. The factors that correlated well with adoption for retail corporations were the absorptive capacity of the firm and the perceived compatibility, complexity, and uncertainty of the innovation. The factors that seemed to influence the adoption decision of smaller chain stores were absorptive capacity, network externalities and the perceived compatibility, observability, uncertainty, and social approval of the innovation. It must be noted that the sample in this study was very small, so the results are only preliminary.