| dc.description.abstract | Advertising is vital to business as it helps to register the business's or events presence to a saturated
market. Advertising has been in existence since 4000 BC. The advertising methods have
revolutionized since the invention of advertising in the marketing mix. There are numerous
advertising methods using different advertising media such as newspapers, radio, television, outdoor
advertising and mobile phones. The choice of the advertising media and method has to be analyzed
critically so as to have high percentage of reach and a good return on investment.
TnKenya, there are 24.9 million mobile phone subscribers representing a penetration of 63.2% for
every 100 inhabitants. Mobile phones by their nature are portable devices. Due to the intimate nature
that people attribute to mobile phones, they can be used by merchants to reach large number of the
population. Mobile phone advertising is not a unique method as merchants have used SMS to send
information and offers regarding their products and services. This research seeks to assess the
viability of context-aware mobile based applications in the Kenyan market and design a prototype
based on the fmdings.
Context-aware mobile advertising involves the provision of location aware advertising messages to
mobile phone subscribers using a defined context. This enables merchants to reach consumers with
highly customized promotions and advertisements, depending on their location which enables
customers to get adverts based on the location they are in and information they prefer.
This research and prototype was used to get the opinion of the merchants and consumers regarding
location aware advertisements. The results demonstrated that context-aware solution is currently not
being extensively used in advertising. It was also established that both advertisers and consumers
were willing to adopt this form of advertising. A number of concerns were raised, the major one
being cost of running the application and consumers privacy.
A prototype was designed to deliver advertisements to consumers based on their proximity to the
business. The prototype was tested and it revealed that since the application was relying on GPS, it
was not convenient as GPS relies on satellites and it is an outdoor system, hence cannot be used
within storey buildings, therefore, there is a need to explore on how to get context using other
technologies such as cell triangulation | en |
