Usage of Mobile Marketing Strategies in Zimbabwe’s Tourism and Hospitality Sector

Abstract

The convergence of the mobile phone and mobile internet presents endless opportunities for the hospitality sector. This study aims to explore knowledge about benefits and usage of four mobile marketing (MM) practices amongst the hospitality tourism marketing employees in Zimbabwe. Four MM practices: short message service (SMS), multimedia message service (MMS) location based service (LBS) and mobile social media (MSM) were examined. The objectives were to establish their benefits or reasons for use, extent of use and, level of popularity of each of these MM practices amongst these employees. A quantitative approach was adopted using a cross – sectional survey. Data was collected from 100 randomly selected respondents using a self completion structured questionnaire. Results indicated that SMS is increasingly becoming unpopular. MSM is the most popular mode of conducting mobile marketing. LBS is rapidly increasing in popularity. MMS has gradually sunk into oblivion. Ubiquity is the main reason of using MM practices. A positive association between knowledge about benefits and MM usage exists. There is a positive association between usage of MM practices and speed of tasks and achievement of work objectives. It is recommended that management should support hospitality marketing employees through acquisition of mobile technology infrastructure for increased use of MM practices in this sector.

Keywords

• mobile marketing
• hospitality
• knowledge
• usage
• ubiquity