MKT 574 Week 5 Mobile Marketing Example

The Visit in Your Pocket: A Mobile Marketing Plan With an App, Location Offers and Text Alerts for a Louisville Aquarium

[Student Name]

University of Phoenix

MKT/574: Marketing: Social, Mobile, and Analytics

Week 5 Assignment

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Riverfront Aquarium, its app plans and its pilot results are composites written for a model paper.

By Week 5 the invented Louisville aquarium in this course has a return-visit strategy, an experiential brand built on discovery and a social media strategy organized around keeper stories, new arrivals, river conservation and evening events. Its mobile presence lags behind. The website loads slowly on phones, tickets arrive as email attachments that many visitors cannot find at the entrance and the aquarium has no app. In the visitor survey, 83 percent of visitors said they used their phones during the visit, mainly for photos, and 46 percent said they missed a feeding or talk they would have liked to see. This paper evaluates the role of mobile marketing and recommends a plan.

A Framework for Mobile Marketing

Shankar and Balasubramanian (2009) synthesized research on mobile marketing and proposed a framework linking consumer factors, such as attitudes toward mobile messages; firm factors, such as the mobile tools a firm uses; and context factors, such as location and time, to outcomes. They noted that mobile marketing is distinctive because the device is personal, always carried and aware of location, which creates both opportunities and privacy concerns. The framework suggests asking what visitors need at each moment and place, rather than starting with technology.

Visitor Needs Across the Visit

Before a visit, local families need to know what is new and to buy tickets easily. During the visit, they need to know where to go, when feedings and talks happen and how to find the café or restrooms. After the visit, they want to share photos and, if they are members, to know when to come back. Young adults need evening event details and fast ticketing; explorers want deeper information on exhibits.

Location and Competition

Fong et al. (2015) ran a field experiment in which a mobile service sent promotions to people near a focal movie theater and near a competing theater. Geo-conquesting, targeting people near a competitor, raised purchase rates, and the depth of the discount mattered differently at each location. The study shows that location-based offers can draw people who are close to an alternative choice.

Context and Crowding

Andrews et al. (2016) studied mobile ads sent to commuters on subway trains and found that people in more crowded trains were more likely to respond to mobile ads, which the authors attributed to people turning inward to their phones when physical space was limited. Context changes attention. For the aquarium, visitors in a crowded gallery or waiting in line may be more receptive to a message about a quieter exhibit or an upcoming talk.

Movement Patterns

Ghose et al. (2019) studied shoppers in a large mall and found that targeting mobile promotions based on a person's movement path, not only their current location, improved redemption and revenue. Paths revealed preferences. Inside the aquarium, a visitor who has spent time at the river galleries may be most interested in a River Days talk.

The phone knows where a visitor is standing and how long they stayed; the plan uses that knowledge only to help them see more.

The Mobile Plan

Four elements make up the plan. First, a visit companion inside a lightweight app and a fast mobile site, with a live map, feeding and talk times and optional alerts ten minutes before events near the visitor's location in the building. Second, mobile tickets and membership cards in phone wallets, scanned at the entrance. Third, location offers sent to app users who opt in, for example an After Dark offer to young adults who are downtown on Thursday evenings and a same-day ticket discount when downtown hotels and the convention center have events. Fourth, opt-in text alerts for members announcing new arrivals, member mornings and seasonal exhibits, no more than twice a month.

Staff Roles

The guest services team will own the companion's daily content, updating feeding times and closures each morning, while the marketing team will manage offers and member texts. Keepers will record short audio notes for exhibits each season, which keeps the content fresh with little production cost.

Privacy and Permission

Location access will be optional, requested only when a visitor first opens the map, with a plain explanation of the benefit. Location data will be stored only in aggregate after 30 days and never sold. Users can turn off alerts at any time. Location offers will be limited to one per week. These rules protect trust, which the brand depends on.

Mobile for School Groups and Accessibility

Two groups deserve particular attention. School groups, about 90,000 students a year, arrive with teachers who need schedules and activity sheets; the mobile site will offer a teacher page with a printable plan and a quiz game students can play on class tablets. Visitors with disabilities benefit from mobile features too: the companion will include audio descriptions of major exhibits, captioned keeper videos and a quiet-route option that avoids the loudest galleries. These features serve the aquarium's mission and widen the audience for its brand.

Features Set Aside

Several ideas were considered and set aside: features that would add cost without clear value, such as augmented reality overlays in every gallery, in-app games unrelated to the animals and push notifications to people who have never visited. Each could be tested later if visitors ask for them.

Connecting to Brand and Social

The app will feature keeper stories and River Days updates, linking to the social pillars. After each visit, members will receive a short message with one photo prompt and the date of the next seasonal change. Visual design will follow the refreshed brand.

Cost

The companion app and mobile site will be built by a regional developer for about $140,000, with $30,000 a year for maintenance and messaging. Wallet tickets use the existing ticketing vendor's tools.

Pilot Test

A spring pilot will offer the companion features to half of weekend visitors, chosen by entry date, while the other half receive the printed map. Measures will include talk and feeding attendance, visit length, café spending, satisfaction ratings and, for members, return visits within 90 days. Location offers will be tested with a holdout group that opts in but receives no offers.

Risks

Download rates may be low among one-time visitors; the mobile site version of the companion addresses this. Alerts could annoy visitors if overused, which the frequency limits address. Technical problems at launch could frustrate guests, so the pilot will run before summer crowds.

Conclusion

Mobile marketing gives Riverfront Aquarium a way to support visitors before, during and after their visits. Research on mobile marketing, location-based promotions, crowded contexts and movement patterns shows that relevant, well-timed messages can change behavior. A companion app and mobile site, wallet tickets, careful location offers and member texts, governed by clear privacy rules and tested in a pilot, extend the brand of discovery into the phone in every visitor's hand.

References

Andrews, M., Luo, X., Fang, Z., & Ghose, A. (2016). Mobile ad effectiveness: Hyper-contextual targeting with crowdedness. Marketing Science, 35(2), 218-233. https://doi.org/10.1287/mksc.2015.0905

Fong, N. M., Fang, Z., & Luo, X. (2015). Geo-conquesting: Competitive locational targeting of mobile promotions. Journal of Marketing Research, 52(5), 726-735. https://doi.org/10.1509/jmr.14.0229

Ghose, A., Li, B., & Liu, S. (2019). Mobile targeting using customer trajectory patterns. Management Science, 65(11), 5027-5049. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3188

Shankar, V., & Balasubramanian, S. (2009). Mobile marketing: A synthesis and prognosis. Journal of Interactive Marketing, 23(2), 118-129. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intmar.2009.02.002