The efficiency of mobile media richness across different stages of online consumer behavior

•Selecting the appropriate media to help consumers make decisions is crucial.•We find out how mobile media richness affects different AISAS stages.•Marketers do not need to use mobile ads possess high media richness all the time.•We provide suggestions for practitioners to place mobile ads more precisely. The popularity of mobile devices has ushered in the prosperity of mobile commerce, yet research on mobile advertising and mobile marketing remains scant. Marketing ads possessing higher media richness generally have a positive effect on consumer decision-making, because rich media conveys more information, but mobile ads with richer media imply higher costs for both the marketer and the audience. The limitations of mobile devices have further highlighted the difficulty of mobile advertising and the issue of advertising costs. Selecting which media to deliver the appropriate information is the latest research trend, but few studies have applied the media richness theory to explain mobile ads’ effect on consumer behavior. This research thus explores the impact of media richness on consumer behavior at different AISAS (attention, interest, search, action, and share) stages, adopting experimental research, convenient sampling, and online questionnaire to collect data. From a total of 424 valid questionnaires, we find that media richness has a greater influence on the three early stages of AIS while having a lower impact on the later stages of AS. This research thus suggests that firms employing mobile ads should choose high richness media for those potential customers who are at the early stage of consumer behavior (AIS). For those who at the later stage (AS), it is good enough for marketers to utilize medium richness mobile ads. Following this suggestion, marketers can place mobile ads more precisely, thus improving the likelihood of a reduction in advertising costs for both the marketer and audience. As mobile ads with high media richness are more effective for high perceived risk products, firms need to use high richness media when they are promoting high perceived risk products even when potential consumers are at the later stage of AS. This research contributes to marketers dedicated to using a mobile advertisement strategy and helps refine both online consumer behavior and the media richness theory when including the context of mobile commerce.