An empirical investigation of mobile services' cross-category promotions

A number of mobile services providers are promoting their new product by leveraging upon customers' recognition of their existing product. However, the effectiveness of such leveraging is yet to be studied systematically, especially in an emerging mobile services context. The current study examines the factors that determine the effectiveness of cross-category promotions of mobile services. On the basis of the theory of brand extension, an adoption model which reflects customers' attitude shift from parent mobile product to the promoted new mobile product was developed and empirically tested against data collected from 545 China Mobile's mobile instant messenger users. Structural equation analysis results indicate that consumers' attitude towards parent mobile product influences their attitude towards the promoted new mobile product both directly as well as indirectly through perceived fit. Consumer trust also plays an important role in the process of customers' evaluation of cross-category promotions of new mobile services.