U&G theory examines the psychological and behavioral utility produced by using mass communication and analyzes the use of motivating and need-satisfying information by audiences. Previous studies concluded that entertainment, informativeness, and irritation are vital dimensions of U&G (Ha et al., 2014). This theory has been widely used in consumer motivation research on traditional media and has made a substantial contribution to the field (Eighmey and McCord, 1998). Moreover, Ducoffe (1996) and Tsang et al. (2004) assumed that entertainment, informativeness, and irritation were related to consumer attitudes when browsing website and mobile advertisements. In this study, we investigated the impacts of informativeness, entertainment, and irritation on consumer attitudes after receiving mobile advertising from an app. This application to mobile advertising is a reasonable extension of U&G theory.

Entertainment and informativeness are interpenetrations in the new technologies (Wang and Sun, 2010). Hence, they can be integrated into one concept: infotainment (Okazaki, 2004). Studies show that whether the internet or mobile networks are involved, infotainment has a positive impact on attitudes, but irritation has a negative one (Okazaki, 2004; Shankar and Balasubramanian, 2009). Recent research also suggested that, as the intelligence of mobile functions increases, users will be able to increase their control of advertising information; consequently, the negative influence of irritation on consumer attitudes will also decrease (Watson et al., 2013). However, the way that these effects change has seldom been discussed. In this study, a promotion focus was investigated as a possible moderator of the positive effect of infotainment on attitudes toward mobile text advertising, whereas a prevention focus was investigated as possibly moderating the negative effect of irritation on attitudes toward mobile text advertising.

Ajzen (1985) proposed a general model, the TPB, to explain the unique behavior of individuals. It reflects an individual's beliefs, attitudes, and intentions. The TPB is an extension of the theory of reasoned action (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975, 1980). In the expectations–value model (Fishbein and Ajzen, 1974), attitudes are considered to be the consequence of individual beliefs. Subjective norms refer to the extent that the perception of opinions from his/her reference groups, such as friends and colleagues, impact an individual's behavior (Schofield, 1974). Perceived behavioral control refers to an individual's subjective appraisal of their own ability and their opportunities to carry out a specific behavior (Ajzen and Madden, 1986). Intention is another vital indicator of an individual's behavior (Ajzen, 1991). The TPB holds that an individual's behavior is impacted by her/his beliefs, attitudes, subjective norms, and other uncontrollable factors (Crespo and Bosque, 2008). In this study, these three variables were used to investigate the consumer's intention to purchase the advertised product. These variables have been used in several previous studies to explore online consumer behavior intention (Luarn and Lin, 2005; Kim et al., 2011; Lin and Chen, 2015).

An individual's attitude tends to be a determinant of his/her behavioral intention (Ajzen and Fishbein, 1975). Many studies have showed a positive relationship between the attitude toward an advertisement and an intention to purchase (Drossos et al., 2013). Subjective norms were found to play an important role in predicting people's intention to consume fast food (Bagozzi et al., 2000) and have been perceived as positively shaping young Chinese people's intention to use mobile services (Zhang and Mao, 2008). Following the TPB, this study assumed that attitudes, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control affect a consumer's purchase intention. Moreover, attitude is typically influenced by the opinions of others (Kim et al., 2013). Thus, the following hypotheses were investigated:

RFT is a goal pursuit theory. It was articulated by Higgins et al. (1997) to address people's perceptions during their decision-making process. Higgins (2000) believed that the consumer decision process stems from a variety of motives. Motivation can be divided into two types: one is to achieve a desired goal, and the other is to avoid an appearance of negative results (Lockwood et al., 2002; Das, 2016). RFT proposes that regulatory focus is a special propensity of individuals when they self-regulate to achieve their goals (Higgins et al., 1997; Brockner et al., 2004). RFT is a chronic manifestation and includes promotion focus and prevention focus, two independent orientations. Promotion focus refers to people's motivation to seek pleasure and is related to an ideal target, that is, that they can obtain a desired outcome. During self-regulation, a radical strategy is required to maximize the probability of obtaining a positive outcome, such as improving the benefit (Crowe and Higgins, 1997; Freitas, 2002). Meanwhile, prevention focus refers to people's motivation to avoid pain and is related to a “should be” target, that is, that they should experience no loss or punishment. A prevention focus usually generates a cautious strategy to minimize the occurrence of a negative outcome, such as reducing a loss (Crowe and Higgins, 1997; Kirmani and Zhu, 2007; Lee et al., 2014). Although a person's regulatory focus is a long-term personality trait, it can be triggered to impact a temporary motivation in a specific situation (Wilson and Ross, 2000; Lockwood et al., 2002).

RFT has been widely used in the field of consumer behavior (Avnet and Higgins, 2006; Wang and Sun, 2010; Ouyang et al., 2015). Scholars have found that promotion and prevention focuses significantly influence consumer decision making (Lee and Santanam, 2014; Das, 2016). According to RFT, a prevention focus causes consumers to perceive a loss from utilizing bundled sales to be higher than it really is (Lin and Huang, 2011), whereas a promotion focus encourages consumers to be more mindful of future results (Joireman et al., 2012). Furthermore, individuals' promotion and prevention focuses have different effects on their intention to purchase, on their participation in online product reviews, and on their willingness to spread a positive word of mouth (Das, 2016). Most of these studies primarily involved Western consumers and are more directed toward traditional and internet marketing environments. Relatively little research exists on Asian consumers in the mobile marketing environment (Zhang and Mao, 2008; Lin and Chen, 2015). This study focused on the different motivations of Chinese consumers in response to mobile text advertising and explored the manner in which a promotion focus or a prevention focus can affect purchasing decisions.

The investigated app was the Taobao app. Its usage percentage in China was 24.1% by the end of 2016 (CNNIC, 2017). By the latest statistics from China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC, 2017), the structure of total Chinese cybercitizens is as follows: the male to female ratio is 52:48; 30.3% are aged 20–29, 23.2% are aged 30–39; 11.5% hold a bachelor's degree; 25% are students, and 64.3% are currently employed.

According to investigational results from one Chinese mobile data business service company, Questmobile, the Taobao app had up to 406 million subscribers by the first quarter of 2017 (QuestMobile, 2017). The demographic profile of its users in China, as of May 2016 was as follows: 49% male, 51% female and 72% of the users were aged 18–34. We have no reason to doubt that this is representative of Chinese shopping apps.

The number of people who responded to the questionnaire was 431, but 81 did not meet the two requirements after answering the first two questions, so they were not permitted to continue with the survey. Thus, a total of 350 respondents finished our survey with 320 valid questionnaires (a response rate of 74%). 171 (53%) were female, and 149 (47%) were male. Most of the participants were young; 240 (75%) respondents were aged 22 to 35 years. In terms of educational attainment, 234 (73%) of the respondents had a bachelor's degree. Moreover, 243 (76%) respondents were employed. The characteristics of these investigated data are broadly consistent with the total population of Taobao app users, so we believe that our data is a representative sample.

All of the measurement items in this study were adopted from previous research. The promotion and prevention focus scales are from Higgins et al. (2001) as translated by Ouyang et al. (2015) into a Chinese context to give them better credibility and reliability. This study directly used their scales to appropriately assess Chinese consumers. We translated the remaining scales from English to Chinese and implemented a back-translation to ensure the consistency and clarity of the questions' expression (Brislin, 1980). To examine the content validities, the translated questionnaire was assessed by two bilingual faculty members. A pretest was conducted to simplify the questions and to ensure that they precisely measured the concepts. Based on the feedback, confusing items were revised. The Cronbach's alpha for all the items was 0.89, which is considerably higher than 0.70, which was the level suggested by Hollis et al. (1978) as acceptable. The main variable measurement items are listed in Table 1.

Related research previously showed that demographic variables (gender, age, education level, and job) are among the important factors influencing attitudes (Wolin and Korgaonkar, 2003; Habuchi et al., 2005). Thus, these factors were used as control variables.

All the items were measured using a five-point Likert scale. The measurement for regulatory focus was from never (1) to always (5), whereas the others were from strongly disagree (1) to strongly agree (5).

First, infotainment and irritation influenced attitudes toward mobile text advertising in opposing directions in accordance with prior research (H1, H2). The present study shows that two main dimensions of U&G, infotainment and irritation, impacted attitudes in opposing directions. The impact of infotainment was greater than that of irritation. This finding confirms previous views about mobile advertising (Tsang et al., 2004). Mobile advertisements tend to have more infotainment and less irritation to increase consumer contentment (McCoy et al., 2008).

Second, the study reveals the moderation effects of regulatory focus between information content characteristics and attitudes toward mobile text advertising (H7a, H7b). In accordance with RFT, this study showed that at a high level of promotion focus, the positive relationship between infotainment and attitudes was strengthened; conversely, at a high level of prevention focus, the negative relationship between irritation and attitudes was strengthened. These results can deepen the understanding of attitudes and benefit subsequent research.

Finally, the mechanism behind the intention to purchase mobile-advertised products was explored. After receiving mobile text advertisements from mobile shopping apps, the consumers' attitudes toward mobile text advertising, together with their subjective norms and perceived behavioral controls, influenced the intention to purchase (H3, H4, and H5). Moreover, this study suggested that subjective norms indirectly impacted the intention to purchase through their attitudes toward mobile text advertising (H6). According to reference group theory, the views of others considerably affect an individual's beliefs and their purchase decisions. Our study indicated that this was true in a mobile advertising context. Additionally, two moderated mediation effects were identified (H8a, H8b). One mediation effect of attitudes toward mobile text advertising between infotainment and intention to purchase was moderated by the promotion focus; whereas, the other mediation effect of attitudes toward mobile text advertising between irritation and intention to purchase was moderated by the prevention focus.

In addition, due to the similarities between the Taobao app and other mobile shopping apps, the above conclusions are also applicable to similar apps. The Taobao app has the largest number of Chinese shoppers (QuestMobile, 2017) and also has a range of products and services which covers most online items. Estimates are that 82% of Chinese internet advertising will be invested in mobile trading platforms by the year 2021 (eMarketer, 2017). Therefore, delivering text advertising via apps can be expected to become a prosperous method. Our findings about mobile text advertising via the Taobao app can be expected to be basically stable.

First, our findings shed light on the use of (promotion focus and prevention focus) regulatory focus in mobile advertising activities. Previous studies on mobile advertising were mostly based on either the single theory of reasoned action (Tsang et al., 2004) or the theory of acceptance model (Muk and Chung, 2015). In the present study, the regulatory focus was found to not only significantly influence the relationship between information characteristics and attitudes but also to moderate the mediation effects of attitudes on information characteristics and the intention to purchase. The empirical test showed that a high promotion focus strengthened the impact of infotainment on attitudes as well as that attitudes mediated the relationship between infotainment and the intention to purchase. Moreover, a high prevention focus increased the impact of irritation on attitudes in addition to reinforcing the mediated effect of attitudes between irritation and the intention to purchase. The results can not only contribute to the further understanding of consumer behavior characteristics with regard to the mobile field but can also shed light on related research based on the RFT in the context of mobile commerce. Furthermore, this study extends the application of RFT to the mobile context and other mobile service activities.

Second, this study helps to elucidate the mechanism of the purchase intention in the mobile context, indicating that it is an extension of the TPB. Most extant studies have discussed the intention to purchase only from the perspective of the TPB. This study, which investigated the intention to purchase from the perspective of regulatory focus, identified a moderating role for regulatory focus, mediating effects of attitudes, and moderated mediation effects. The results of this study improve the understanding of the mechanism underlying the intention to purchase in a mobile context. The results also highlighted the importance of consumer motivation in the mobile field. Moreover, this study laid a foundation for conducting related behavioral intention research in different contexts.

Third, the results of our research appear to be representative and universal. Extant studies on mobile advertising have primarily focused on no-income groups, such as university students. In this study, 95% of the respondents had had mobile shopping experience for at least 1 year and 76% were employees from various companies and thus had a certain economic foundation. Hence, we believe that our data is representative and our findings will be valuable. Furthermore, the empirical results showed that the participants had either a positive attitude (Table 4, the attitudes mean = 3.32) or a near neutral irritation (Table 4, irritation mean = 2.94), a finding which is consistent with the notion that the negative impact of irritation has become weaker than in the past (Xu et al., 2009).

In addition to the above theoretical implications, this study has the following practical implications.

First, the findings highlighted the importance of subjective norms. Although attitudes are usually emphasized in consumer behavior intention research, managers must carefully attempt to govern the influence of reference groups on attitudes and the intention to purchase in the mobile context.

Second, the findings can enlighten designers about the design of mobile advertising. Managers often try to avoid irritating consumers. Our results suggest that they should also concentrate on increasing the infotainment to please consumers. Avoidance alone is not enough. A high level of infotainment is beneficial to the formation of a positive attitude and to the purchase intention. Advertising designers may need to increase the informativeness and entertainment of mobile advertising content.

Third, the findings can contribute to perfecting the marketing strategy of various companies. In general, marketing managers employ strategies aimed at managing the information content characteristics of mobile advertising (Tsang et al., 2004; Xu et al., 2009; Liu et al., 2012). This study suggested that they should pay attention not only to the information content of mobile advertising but also to the regulatory focus (promotion focus and prevention focus). For example, delivering enjoyable mobile text advertising to promotion focus customers may contribute to creating better attitudes and a stronger intention to purchase; but how to identify promotion focus customers and prevention focus ones is the question. The literature indicates that a promotion focus can be triggered temporarily in some situations (Lockwood et al., 2002). Managers could motivate consumers to purchase by activating each individual's promotion focus by some mobile promotion activities. Furthermore, the method we used in this article can serve as a reference for managers. By sending the online testing items of about a regulation focus to their customers, they may be able to distinguish between them. Analyzing the existing customer database is another possible method (Das, 2016). In addition, promotion focus individuals are inclined to change the current situation, whereas prevention focus ones are inclined to maintain the status quo (Chernev, 2006; Herzenstein et al., 2007). Hence, managers could deliver the customized information about their goods in accordance with the recipient's regulatory focus. For instance, for the promotion focus customers, receiving new or high technology products text advertising from shopping apps would help to draw attention and improve the products' brand awareness, whereas sending information about how the product will help the recipients maintain their status quo will tend to attract prevention focus individuals.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.