Location management for mobile commerce applications in wireless Internet environment

Recent technological advancement has made mobile commerce applications a sustainable business tool due to the capability of providing long-term economic growth without negatively impacting the community’s social, environmental, and cultural aspects. Nonetheless, the attention paid to mobile commerce’s role in facilitating firms’ economic growth among Malaysian entrepreneurs has been barely noticeable. Most entrepreneurs are not convinced to transform their main business channels from conventional to online (mobile) modes due to the lack of financial information and awareness of environmental concerns. Therefore, this study aims to examine the financial performance and mobile transport usage trends of mobile commerce applications. A quantitative research design through an online survey was applied for data collection, with 380 samples were analysed using IBM SPSS Statistic 26. The study found that mobile commerce users (entrepreneurs) agree that there has been an increasing trend in the number of customers, sales revenue, and monthly profit, at 99.2%, 99.1% and 96.6%, respectively. The rising trend in financial performance proves that mobile commerce is vital for a firm’s economic growth. The study also showed that the frequency of mobile transport usage showed a decreasing trend at 27% once the mobile commerce application is actively used among entrepreneurs. The decreasing trend of mobile transport usage can reduce carbon dioxide emissions and minimize individual movement, benefiting the environment and society. Hence, the study can provide invaluable insights to entrepreneurs and escalate their confidence levels in using mobile commerce applications as their primary business channels. Technology engagement in businesses will help entrepreneurs sustain their businesses, spur innovation among sellers, stimulate social benefits, increase the economy, and reduce environmental damage in the long run. In conclusion, mobile commerce is an efficient technological advancement which contributes to firm and country sustainability.

Worldwide, more than 1/3 of all e-commerce transactions in business-to-consumer industries are nowadays executed via mobile devices (Criteo, 2015). Despite its increasing importance, it can be noted that mobile commerce does not seem to “take-off” equally across diverse goods and services contexts. We observe, for instance, that mobile commerce is quite common in service industries for purchasing tickets (e.g., for flights, public transportation, and sport events), while it is less common for services such as financial products. Balasubramanian et al. (2002) addressed this issue and proposed that contexts of m-commerce differ from each other with regard to several characteristics. For example, they propose that location sensitivity (among other characteristics) differs for various m-commerce applications, and that this characteristic may impact acceptance of m-commerce across industries. It may be that acceptance of m-commerce is higher in some industries since use of location sensitive data is appreciated by customers, while it is not valued in other purchasing contexts. Against this background, we propose that examining (1) risk perception related to mobile commerce and (2) different types of mobile commerce applications are essential for gaining a deeper understanding of the phenomenon of differing relevance of m-commerce across industries. In particular, our study acknowledges the differential roles of the financial, performance, and security facets of risk. In addition, we assume that the role of value and risk dimensions differs subject to three mobile commerce application characteristics which are location sensitivity, time criticality, and extent of control. Based on a dataset of 800 respondents, results of our models demonstrate that especially security risk can act as a critical inhibitor of acceptance. The extent to which performance risk and financial risk impact perceived usefulness was found to be moderated by the three contextual characteristics. From a managerial perspective, results show which factors should deliberately be considered in the development of m-commerce applications, and in which different application contexts they matter.

The potential advantages of mobile commerce applications have been discussed extensively in the recent literature, with many industries offering mobile services. Examples from the financial sector include instant funds transfer (mobile banking) and share trading (mobile brokerage). Commuter services such as sending schedule change alerts or using a mobile phone to pay for parking have become widespread. Applications based on the location of the user (e.g., offering mobile coupons to customers in the vicinity of a shop or a restaurant) are also being trialled (Barnes, 2002; Siau, Lim, & Shen, 2001; Varshney, Vetter, & Kalakota, 2000). Despite the potential benefits (for example, improved customer service) mobile commerce applications have not been widely adopted across business sectors. Mobile banking illustrates the point: initially, seen as the “killer application” of mobile commerce (Kannan, Chang, & Whinston, 2001), it has now been termed a “dead end” (Semrau & Kraiss, 2001). It has also been classified as an application which has not yet matured (Mallat, Rooi, & Tuunainen, 2004). However, innovative applications continue to emerge, for example, breaking news alerts (CNN, n.d.), and a mobile tutoring service (Butte, 2004). It has become important therefore to identify the determinants of mobile commerce adoption and the emerging adoption patterns. A significant number of results in this area have been reported in the literature. Recent examples include studies of mobile services adoption in areas characterized by relatively high penetration of mobile devices—such as Denmark (Constantiou, Damsgaard, & Knutsen, 2004), Singapore (Samtani, Leow, Lim, & Goh, 2004), and Finland (Carlsson, Hyvonen, Repo, & Walden, 2005). The identified drivers and inhibitors of mobile commerce adoption can be broadly classified as factors related to mobile infrastructure access, and factors relating to perceived consumer value. This article proposes a mobile commerce reference model which incorporates both infrastructure access and customer value and can be used to formulate research questions related to mobile commerce adoption. The remainder of the article is organized as follows: first, mobile commerce is defined and compared to electronic commerce. The next section introduces a mobile commerce reference model and discusses mobile commerce adoption. The article continues with a review of future trends and a brief conclusion.

Aim/Purpose: Mobile commerce adoption is low in developing countries; hence, public servants may not consider mobile commerce and mobile payments. Understanding the factors that influence mobile commerce and mobile payments in their context will aid in promoting those services. Background: The study investigates the factors that influence public servants’ mobile commerce and mobile payments in Ghana. Hence, it provides some understanding of the various aspects of mobile commerce and mobile payments adoption, such as acceptance, use, and eventual adoption into the user’s daily life, and how that affects their behaviour. Methodology: The research was conducted by surveying the factors influencing public servants’ adoption of mobile commerce and payments in Ghana. A cross-sectional survey was undertaken to put the research model to the test to measure the constructs and their relationships. Contribution: The study confirmed previous findings and created a new conceptual model for mobile commerce and mobile payment adoption and usage in the Ghanaian context. Findings: The variables of performance expectancy, trust, and facilitating conditions have a significant positive influence on behavioural intention. The factors of effort expectation and social influence have a significant negative impact. Price value and perceived reliability are latent variables that do not affect behavioural intention. Behavioural intention and facilitating conditions significantly influence the actual use behaviour of mobile commerce and mobile payment users. Recommendations for Practitioners: Mobile commerce is emerging as a new mode of transactions, with firms providing enabling platforms for users. Mobile commerce could become the most acceptable application for the next generation of mobile platform applications. This study offers insights into the fluidity of the mobile environment, with implications that spell out what will be effective mobile commerce services that will continue to be relevant. Mobile applications are attractive to people because they provide a better user experience. These mobile applications have been optimised to provide a fast, easy and delightful experience. Mobile commerce and mobile payment service providers can attract and retain more users if attention is paid to performance expectancy, trust, and facilitating conditions since they influence individuals’ decisions to adopt. Mobile technology is almost ubiquitous, influencing both online sales and in-store sales. With the right mobile commerce platform and features, businesses can expect to increase in-store and online sales, catering to a more extensive clientele. Mobile devices are the primary means that most customers use to look up information about products they see in stores, such as product reviews and pricing options. This study indicates that mobile commerce service providers can achieve a more extensive customer base by promoting performance expectancy, trust, and behavioural intentions. Recommendation for Researchers: Despite the numerous studies in the mobile commerce literature, few have used integrated models of perceived reliability, trust, and price value or methods to evaluate these factors in the emerging mobile commerce industry. Also, it combines mobile commerce and mobile payments, which very few that we know of have done. Impact on Society: Ghana is already in a cash-lite economy. Thus, the study is appropriate with the result of trust being a significant factor. It implies that people will begin using mobile commerce and mobile payments with a bit of drive to bring about this drive quickly. Future Research: Future research could further test the adapted model with moderating factors of age, gender, and education to delve deeper into the complexities of mobile commerce and mobile payments.

Up until today, various studies have discussed gamification but none of them have explored how different types of gamification will affect customer satisfaction and loyalty. Therefore, this study aims to analyze the impact of several types of gamification in loyalty programs on customer loyalty in mobile commerce applications (m-commerce). This study covers the types of gamification found in m-commerce applications in Indonesia, including points, tasks/quests, and levels-related gamification. Data collection in this study was carried out through an online questionnaire distributed to users who have used gamified loyalty programs on m-commerce applications in Indonesia. To test the hypothesis, this study uses a covariance-based structural equation modeling method with the help of AMOS 26. The results found that points, tasks/quests, and levels-related gamification significantly affected utilitarian and hedonic values. It was also found that utilitarian value affects satisfaction and loyalty, but hedonic value only affects satisfaction. This study explains the importance of utilitarian values in implementing gamification in loyalty programs and provides insight into the type of gamification that has the most significant influence on customer loyalty, which is levels-related gamification.

Technology industry is experiencing its dramatic changes in the amount of data that requires management and the place that such an asset are stored. Despite the exponential growth of information, business leaders are expecting agility in order to complete a lot of works much faster and less expensively using data. With the generalized spread of smart devices under this rapidly changing digital environment and subsequent spread of wireless Internet users and communication expenditure, the amount of data via wireless Internet worldwide is increasing rapidly at a faster rate every year. However, the communication environment cannot catch up with the demands of consumers for the super high-speed wireless Internet. Accordingly, this paper aims to look at the establishment of the cloud storage-based file system that can provide services to meet the needs of users in the cloud computing environment via wireless Internet and the examples of the establishment of such a system.

Telecommunications, the Internet, and mobile computing are merging their technologies to form a new business called mobile commerce or the wireless Internet. As more companies make their Web sites accessible to wireless devices and offer services and software to support wireless connections, they urgently need to consider how well the existing infrastructure will support their applications. A well-thought-out strategy is key to any major network change, especially a wireless one, which can touch many different aspects of a business organization. Provided in this chapter is an overall description of mobile commerce, the Internet’s emerging model, and examination of its current state-of-the-art, opportunities and challenges, and future trends. It explains the requirements for operating mobile commerce and the numerous ways of providing this wireless Internet business. While the Internet is already a valuable form of business that already transformed the way the world is doing business, it is about to change again. This change is being driven by consumer demand for wireless devices and the desire to be connected to information and data available through the Internet. There are many new opportunities that have only begun to be explored, and this will become a large revenue source for those who capitalize upon this new form of technology. However, like other capital ventures, these new opportunities have their drawbacks, which may limit growth of the mobile commerce market if not dealt with. Mobile electronic commerce technology is changing our world of business, just as the Internet has changed business today.

The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application and research subject: mobile commerce. Understanding or constructing a mobile or an electronic commerce system is an arduous task because the system involves a wide variety of disciplines and technologies and the technologies are constantly changing. To facilitate understanding and constructing such a system, this article divides the system into six components: (i) applications, (ii) client computers or devices, (iii) mobile middleware, (iv) wireless networks, (v) wired networks, and (vi) host computers. Elements in these components specifically related to the subject are described in detail and lists of current technologies for component construction are discussed. Another important and complicated issue related to the subject is the mobile or electronic commerce application programming. It includes two types of programming: client-side and server-side programming, which will be introduced too.

With the tremendous advances in hand-held computing and communication capabilities, and the rapid proliferation of mobile devices, we are seeing a growth in mobile commerce in various consumer and business markets. In this paper, we present a novel architecture for end-to-end mobile commerce applications. We designed, implemented and deployed a system for mobile commerce connected to eMarketplaces. The system is currently undergoing trials under various configurations and in various countries. A number of end-to-end configurations for mobile commerce were experimented with, and the pros and cons were investigated. During field trials, which lasted many months, to our surprise, with WAP and HDML based clients, we were able see very good end-to-end performance for a mobile user trading at a B2B server located far away. In this paper, we also present the core issues around providing disconnected services by empowering the mobile clients with commerce functionality. Our approach is based on state-machine modeling and synchronization of objects manipulated on the client and server side.

This paper discusses a framework that supports weaving social elements into mobile commerce applications. This weaving takes place through different types of social networks that identify the stakeholders taking part in completing these applications. These stakeholders are consumers, providers, and brokers and are connected to each other through relationships such as competition, referral, loyalty, and collaboration. Each relationship is mapped onto a social network upon which a stakeholder relies before engaging in any of these applications and afterwards, making any decision. The value of social networks added to mobile commerce is illustrated with a set of experiments implementing a smart mobile restaurant guide.

It is widely acknowledged that mobile commerce is a field of enormous potential. However, it is also commonly admitted that the development in this field is constrained. There are still considerable barriers waiting to be overcome. One of the barriers is most software engineers are not familiar with handheld programming, which is the programming for handheld devices such as smart cellular phones and PDAs (personal digital assistants). This article gives a study of handheld computing to help software engineers better understand this subject. It includes three major topics: • Mobile commerce systems: The system structure includes six components: (1) mobile commerce applications, (2) mobile handheld devices, (3) mobile middleware, (4) wireless networks, (5) wired networks, and (6) host computers. • Handheld computing: It includes two kinds of computing: client- and server-side handheld computing. • Palm OS programming: The Palm OS Developer Suite is used to develop applications for palm devices by handheld programmers. This article focuses on Palm OS programming by giving a step-by-step procedure of a palm application development. Other client-side handheld computing is also discussed.

An empirical study of mobile commerce in insurance industry: Task–technology fit and individual differences

Mobile eCommerce applications are increasingly becoming popular for shopping online in Africa, since the means of accessing the Internet is mostly through mobile devices. This presents an opportunity to explore and understand the key issues affecting African mobile eCommerce applications by performing sentiment analysis of users reviews from seven top African mobile eCommerce applications (i.e., Jiji Nigeria, Jumia, Jiji Kenya, Konga, Takealot, KiliMall and Jiji Uganda). We implement two sentiment analysis approaches, which are Linguistic Inquiry Word Count (LIWC) and Machine Learning (ML), to classify user reviews into positive or negative sentiment polarity. Specifically, we compare five ML algorithms and the LIWC with respect to their performance, and also conduct thematic analysis to uncover the positive and negative factors affecting African mobile eCommerce. Our results show that LIWC is the best performing method with 86.7% F1-score. Our thematic analysis reveals various business, legal, and technology issues, as well as positive factors such as ease of use, fast delivery time, and affordable items. Finally, we offer recommendations on how to tackle the negative issues.

With the rapid growth in mobile commerce (m-commerce) applications, the need for providing suitable infrastructure to support these applications has become critical. Secure multicast is a key element of this infrastructure, in particular, to support group m-commerce applications such as mobile auctions, product recommendation systems, and financial services. Despite considerable attention to m-commerce security, most existing security solutions focus on unicast communications. On the other hand, numerous solutions for secure multicast exist that are not specifically designed with m-commerce as a target environment. Clearly, to address secure multicast in m-commerce, we must start by forming a comprehensive picture of the different facets of the problem and its solutions. In this chapter, we identify system parameters and subsequent security requirements for secure multicast in m-commerce. Attacks on m-commerce environments may undermine satisfying these security requirements resulting, at most times, in major losses. We present a taxonomy of common attacks and identify core services needed to mitigate these attacks and provide efficient solutions for secure multicast in m-commerce. Among these services, authentication and key management play a major role. Given the varying requirements of m-commerce applications and the large number of current key management schemes, we provide a taxonomy and a set of performance metrics to aid m-commerce system designers in the evaluation and selection of key management schemes.

Mobile Commerce (M-Commerce) applications are becoming popular among Arab population. The applications have been considered as a necessity in their life for performing online transactions such as buying goods. For these reasons, it is necessary to build M-Commerce applications that are similar to online websites in terms of its usability and to avoid usability problems which may lead to frustration. In addition, users expect these applications to support their native language; Arabic language adds extra challenges when it comes to designing a usable User Interface (UI). Having a set of heuristics to evaluate Arabic M-Commerce is crucial to these goals. The current heuristics for M-Commerce were developed without considering UI for Arabic M-Commerce applications. This paper presents a set of heuristics for evaluating the UI of Arabic M-Commerce. The presented heuristics are divided into six categories, including: Search and Findability, Visual Design, Translatability, Consistency, User Control and Freedom, and Adaptability. The process of developing the proposed heuristics includes three stages; firstly, generating draft heuristics based on the literature review study, and then the draft was reviewed by three HCI experts, and finally the modified heuristics after expert review were sent out for a final evaluation by a usability expert community. An online survey has been used to collect data from the community. The obtained comments and suggestions from the community were used to finalize the proposed set of heuristics, which are presented in this paper.