Purpose – Research on technology acceptance involves one's psychological aspect, known as technology readiness. Particularly in the digital acceptance context related to mobile advertising, this psychological condition is referred to digital readiness. Nasution, Rusnandi, Qodariah and Arnita (2018) argue that digital readiness is a prominent factor in the adoption of technology and digital applications. They have proven the importance of this digital readiness in their research on digital mastery level in a telecommunication company in Indonesia. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of digital readiness on the acceptance toward mobile advertising among millennials in Bandung, Indonesia.
Relevant theories – Mobile advertising is part of digital advertising, as stated by Nasution & Aghniadi (2016), they define mobile advertising as a form of digital advertising that has attentions on engaging a strong communication to audience. This type of advertising adoption is still continuously growing and becoming preferable form of advertising for the Millenials. Researchers developed a model that links the influence of digital readiness to mobile advertising acceptance. In addition to these relationships, the research model they developed from the Technology Acceptance Model also included the influence of perceived usefulness and perceived risk to mobile ads acceptance.
Design/methodology/approach – The research model is developed from Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) with a specific attention to assessing whether digital readiness influences the respondents’ perception of usefulness and risk of mobile advertising. The research performs quantitative approach using survey that is formed based on previous literature and conceptual model. Structural equations modelling (SEM) is also conducted to test the constructed model and the proposed hypotheses. Byme (2010) states the significance of the estimated coefficients for the hypothesis relationships which indicate whether the relationship between constructs held true or not. This research will then compare between three models that are differed by range of respondents’ ages. First model will be combined age that is 17-24 years old, second model is 17-20 years old and third model is 21-24 years old.
Findings – The results show that digital readiness has a significant influence towards mobile advertising acceptance among Millennials, in which action readiness is more considered than attitudinal readiness in terms of further assessing mobile advertising. In addition, the study also illustrates Millennials’ perception of usefulness and risk of receiving mobile advertising. Younger group (17 – 20 years old) will not be affected much by usefulness of mobile advertising rather than the older group who will consider much about usefulness on accepting mobile advertising. The group also will take risk along with their ability to accept mobile advertising. It contradicts with the older group (21 – 24 years old) who see risk as hindrance in accepting mobile advertising.
Research limitations/implications – The area coverage of respondents only included several cities across Java and does not concern about the place of origin of respondents. Besides, this research also possesses an age limit for its respondents that range from 17 to 24 years old to limit the diversity of attitudes, beliefs and perceptions.
Originality/value – This study focuses on the concept of Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) in which the digital readiness is applied in the context that has not been conducted in Indonesia. Researchers conducted an empirical study on the effect of digital readiness on mobile advertising that is part of digital technology. The results of this research provide opportunities for digital readiness applications in research on the adoption of other digital technologies.
Paper type - Applied research

• Reza Ashari Nasution(Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia)
• Dwine Fatimah Azzahra(Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia)
• Devi Arnita(Institut Teknologi Bandung, Indonesia)