The Effectiveness of Highlighting Different Communication Orientations in Promoting Mobile Communication Technology at Work vs. at Home: Evidence from a Field Experiment

With the development of mobile communication technologies, people can now engage in seamless communications with family members and coworkers at both home and work. When promoting a new mobile communication technology (e.g., the 5G network), firms may be tempted to emphasize how the technology can strengthen communication both within and across the two domains with the hope of improving purchase rates. Yet research has suggested that people may perceive mobile communication differently depending on whether those they are communicating with others who belong to the same domain. Thus, the promotion of the technology to potential users should perhaps consider users’ location domain and their communication targets. Through a field experiment, we show that when promoting mobile communication technology in the home domain, highlighting prevention-focused communication promotes greater purchase rates. However, at work, when coworkers are the target of communication, highlighting promotion-focused communication works better. These findings can not only help practitioners design more effective promotional messages in promoting mobile communication technologies but also contribute to the understanding of nuanced differences in the nature of mobile communication that make it more appealing to users in different within- and cross-domain communication scenarios.