An Analysis of M-Commerce Services in Digital Content Markets: Six Societal Environments Effecting M-Commerce (Track 1, Session 13)
Author(s) :
Merja Taipaleenmaki (University of Tampere, Finland)
Abstract : E-commerce and m-commerce will change the way in which people experience the societal environment. Opinions on socio-political, marketing, technological, retail outlet and media distribution aspects have also been sought. The research question dealt with �whether m-commerce services fulfil the expectations both of customers and of service developers and if market demand is being met�. In terms of the primary research question, the research also asks two more in-depth questions from the organisational point of view: - what are the crucial points for an organisation when creating new markets for m-commerce value-added products? - what are the actions that an organisation needs to take to enable them to survive in the changing markets of mobile content and service products, if willing to do so? The methodology of the research was qualitative and findings were based on both the content analysis of m-commerce value-chains and open-ended interviews. The six environments of m-commerce worked as a framework for the questions in an open-ended interview. Two m-commerce value-added services, which presented two different types of business models: a closed operator and a customer centric m-commerce model were chosen. Two types of m-commerce services were described and analysed. The sample of interviewees (n=17) consisted of spokespeople for them and a few experts. Research findings supported the hypothesis and the main findings were: - that m-commerce services differ from traditional and e-commerce services in terms of time, context and location. This means that research and development activities must take into account mobile end users with a mobile device. - that the two value chains of m-commerce which were analysed showed that the roles of internal organisations are unclear. This means that there are different opinions about the quality and amount of content, pricing and technological issues. - that consumers should be aware of existing services and of the m-commerce services enabled by existing technology. The customer should then be aware of the correct and efficient use of the m-commerce product. Marketing efforts may suffer as a result of this, for example, and the marketing message may be totally wrong. Future research problems include the dilemma of pricing m-commerce products, because pricing and even transfer costs were considered to be quite high.

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