Mobile permission marketing: framing the market inquiry

The emergence of a mobile data infrastructure interconnected with the Internet and television marks the advent of a new marketing channel based on mobile messaging and complementary to traditional marketing channels and the Internet. Mobile marketing test drives are proliferating around the world, with the United Kingdom as the laboratory of innovation. Powerful brand names are involved. Technologies and business models are assessed through experimental campaigns and user-attitude studies. This article frames the ongoing inquiry on mobile marketing through an overview of the novel marketing channel and proposes a brief analysis of the emerging industry structure, followed by a discussion of the split of resources between incumbents and new entrants (i.e., entrepreneurial mobile marketing companies) and their effective competitive positioning.