New Perspectives on M-Commerce Research

ABSTRACT This paper summarizes the progress and the future directions of m-commerce research. Despite the rapid proliferation of Internet-enabled mobile handsets, empirical research has been undertaken only in a limited number of research areas. Important progress has been made in mobile Internet and SMS-based mobile advertising adoption, but other important topics, such as e- commerce and m-commerce comparison, mobile-based word-of-mouth, and methodological issues, have rarely been addressed. Future studies should explore these areas. In closing, the seven contributions to this Special Issue are introduced. Keywords: IT management; M-commerce; Marketing; Wireless communication 1. Defining M-Commerce The Internet-enabled mobile handset has rapidly achieved worldwide penetration, due to its very personal nature and sophisticated communication technologies. However, unlike e-commerce research, empirical explorations of mcommerce have seen only modest growth, because of the considerable uncertainties involved in mobile research. One major problem in m-commerce research is the lack of standards in terms, concepts, and theories. Although the infrastructure of wireless technology varies across markets, researchers tend to use the term "m-commerce" without considering the specific conditions and prerequisites of what they are examining. In addition, industry participation in academic research is at best occasional, and, in many cases, rapidly developing mobile technology may not be accepted as much as practitioners expect: either because of the higher cost per service ratio, or simply because these services can easily be replaced by the wired Internet. Current mobile Internet applications enable consumers to access a variety of services: Web information search, SMS (short message services), MMS (multimedia message service), banking, payment, gaming, emailing, chat, weather forecast, GPS (global positioning service), and so forth. Collectively, we denominate this wide array of services as "m-commerce. " However, a clear distinction between m-commerce and PC-based electronic commerce has rarely been made. In a narrow sense, m-commerce can be defined as "any transaction with a monetary value that is conducted via a mobile telecommunications network" [Durlacher 1999]. Sadeh [2002] characterizes m-commerce more broadly, as "the emerging set of applications and services people can access from their Internet-enabled mobile devices. " Typically, m-commerce takes place in a strategic platform called a "mobile portal. " There, third-generation (3G) mobile communication systems offer a high degree of commonality of worldwide roaming capability, supporting a wide range of Internet and multimedia applications and services with higher data rates. From the perspective of marketing, Nysveen, Pedersen, and Thorbjornsen [2005] propose a grid of mobile Internet services classification that employs four primary axes: person-interactive versus machine-interactive, and goal-oriented versus experiential services. Figure 1 is an adapted version of this classification scheme. "Person interactivity" occurs between people through a medium, while "machine interactivity" refers to the interaction between people and the medium. In the latter, users can freely modify the content and form of a mediated environment. A goal-oriented process is defined by utilitarian benefits, while an experiential process provides hedonic benefits. This classification grid offers a key to understanding the future research directions of m-commerce. That is, future research should clearly define process characteristics, and the type of interactivity, in order to provide the audience with clear implications regarding a specific mobile service. In particular, very little research has addressed the question of interactivity in mobile devices, although it has been argued that mobile technology is an alternative way to connect to the Internet (i. …