Mobile advertising and mobile money services are making strong inroads among China’s newly affluent classes, according to a new consumer survey from ABI Research.
 
This punctures the conventional thinking that strong consumer response to mobile advertising and the use of mobile devices for financial transactions are limited to mature North American and European markets.
 
According to practice director, Neil Strother: “Respondents were asked to indicate what actions they had taken as a result of clicking on an ad displayed on their mobile phones over the previous three months. Nearly half (49%) had received a coupon, while 46% had investigated the product or service and 45% had signed up to receive text alerts. These were the most common responses.”
 
As result of these responses, at least a quarter of respondents had also visited a local business (44%), downloaded or purchased some content (44%), signed up for an email newsletter (39%), or made a purchase (25%).
 
Added Strother: “These survey results highlight that commercialisation of the mobile Internet through advertising is fairly strong in China. There may be a different kind of openness to advertising at work here. It’s possible that newly-affluent Chinese consumers are more receptive to advertising than some of their often jaded western counterparts, whose cultures have been saturated with ads for many generations.”
 
The online survey of 1,000 Chinese consumers was conducted in March-April 2011.