Description

The objective of this dissertation is to study the impact of location-based advertising on consumers' preferences and their decision making. With the increasing adoption of smartphones, consumers are now able to make better informed decisions based on context-specific information provided by their mobile phones. More precisely, smartphones allow the usage of mobile applications such as location-based services (LBS) that deliver contextual information (e.g., distance information) on consumers' physical surroundings (e.g., stores, shops or restaurants). In addition, LBS also enable companies to target consumers via mobile advertising depending on their devices' location. Three purchase-related aspects that might be affected by the increasing exposure to contextual information related to LBS are: (1) how consumers learn about products or services, (2) how they search for products or services and (3) how they purchase those products and services subsequently. This cumulative dissertation comprises three essays that aim to investigate all of these aspects with regard to location-based advertising.