High Level Modeling and Evaluation of Multi-Channel Services

The objective of this thesis is two-fold: (1) to study potential factors which influence users’ adoption of mobile services, and (2) to study important factors to construct a business process support system in a mobile setting. Consequently, this thesis consists of the following two research artifacts. Research artifact one is a mobile service acceptance model (MSAM) to access the adoption of mobile services. Research artifact two is a conceptual modeling language, called business process characterizing model (BPCM), which aims to support business process support system construction in a mobile setting.These two research artifacts are closely related. As described in the V-model, system requirements analysis and system acceptance are closely associated with each other. A business process support system in a specific domain in a mobile setting can be regarded as an advanced mobile system or service. Therefore, a good analysis of the system requirements and characteristics of the business processes involved in the domain in terms of BPCM is a key to the success of the adoption of the developed mobile system. Vice versa, some key factors which may influence the adoption of mobile system can also be taken into consideration when analyzing system requirements and characterizing relevant business processes at a high level.The MSAM is an extension of the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM), with a consideration of Trust, Context, and Personal Initiatives and Characteristics factors in addition to Perceived Ease of Use and Perceived Usefulness, to study the user adoption of mobile services. In addition, seven research hypotheses based on the research model were developed. Furthermore, in order to operationalize the research model, a survey instrument for measuring the adoption of mobile services was developed using the following steps: (1). Item Creation, (2). Item Refinement, (3). Item Testing. Based on 22 measurement items that were retained, the proposed research model was empirically tested using data collected from a questionnaire of 46 users of a mobile service called eMSIS. The findings revealed that Perceived Initiatives and Characteristics, Trust, Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use are key determinants for the users to adopt the mobile service. Context via Perceived Usefulness and Perceived Ease of Use has an indirect effect on Intention to Use. The results indicated that the fitness of the research model was good and the seven research hypotheses were supported. The results and findings derived from this study will not only enhance our understanding of mobile services adoption, but also provide some insights to practitioners for designing and developing mobile services.Concerning the second research artifact, BPCM is proposed to describe the main characteristics and properties of a business process in a mobile setting. A BPCM metamodel is defined. Further, to store and query BPCM models, the BPCM repository architecture is presented. In addition, a combined modeling framework consisting of goal modeling, process modeling and business process characterizing modeling is depicted to support business process support system development. To assess the usability and quality of BPCM, a case study with regard to practical arrangements of a conference series was carried out. As for the BPCM language quality, we found that BPCM was able to address most process-oriented knowledge of a business domain with the exception of the control-flow and decomposition aspect. Also bundling of context aspects appeared to be useful. Moreover, the evaluation results also confirmed that the BPCM model could be used as a basis model for developing business process support systems. However, we saw some room for further improvements for BPCM, such as improved tool support for BPCM.The contributions of this thesis are summarized as follows.An extended technology acceptance model, called mobile services acceptance model (MSAM), to be used to evaluate the users’ adoption of mobile servicesA survey instrument to measure intention to use a mobile serviceA modeling language, called Business Process Characterizing Model (BPCM) to support business process support systems development in a mobile settingA BPCM repository architecture for storing and querying the BPCM modelAn evaluation of the quality and usability of BPCM for early stage process modeling in a case study