Investigation of factors affecting the adoption of mobile shopping (DBA, Dissertation) - Essay Example

The chapter is organized into six sections. In section 2.2, the definition, enabling technologies and current development of mobile shopping is briefly reviewed. The Technology adoption theories and research on factors influencing online shopping and mobile shopping adoption of consumers are described and discussed in detail in section 2.3, 2.4 and 2.5. The gaps in the previous literature are identified in section 2.6. A preliminary conceptual model for this study is developed in section 2.7 with the associated hypotheses developed based on supporting literature to be further tested in the current research.

Finally, conclusions are presented in section 2.8. 2.2 Overview of Mobile Shopping With the integration of web browser functionality in mobile telephones, the benefits of virtual storefronts have become inevitable for consumers. With the development of the mobile Internet since the use of 3G networks, despite its high expectations, mobile shopping has not received an extremely favorable response from the market so far. Only those digital products like ring tones and mobile application are popular.

The transaction activity of real products still failed to attract the customer's attention. 2.2.1 Definition There are different definitions of what is mobile shopping. The simplest definition of mobile shopping is the purchase of product at mobile site or portal through the mobile network. A more broaden the definition of mobile shopping is the usage of wireless Internet service for shopping and purchasing by the consumers through their cell phones (Ko et al. 2009). Varshney and Vetter (2002) classified cellular business applications in eleven categories, based on the mobile characteristics.

The categories are wireless data centers, mobile inventory management, proactive services management, mobile entrainment and gaming services, wireless re-engineering, mobile offices, mobile public sale and reverse sale, mobile distance education, mobile advertising, mobile shopping, and mobile financial applications. This classification is based on the traditional view that shopping is viewed as a multi stage process instead of the single payment action at the cashier counter. The buying cycle comprises the shopping approaches and policies of end users.

This also explains the reason behind the searching objectives by means of the internet can be a precursor of e-shopping. It has been identified that end-users set criteria and action plans for shopping so that to execute composite shopping behaviors (Darden & Dorsch, 1990). As per Funk, “early mobile shopping was driven by sales in packaged music and videos and fashion, where the latter includes clothing, jewelry, cosmetics, accessories, furniture, and health-related products” (Funk, 2007).

Improvements along mobile technologies accelerate the physical dependency over the virtual side. Nowadays, traditional retailers also think in a multichannel way because their customers are cross-channel. As per dealers, current attractive, potential, advanced and congregated cellular products are diminishing the positions that split shopping channels. Mobile shopping is being integrated into the in-store shopping experience. Mobiles can be used not only to check product features including competitive offers, but also to take suggestions from friends to make a better and confident decision.

Innovative retailers have been taking advantage of m-commerce to pledge the benefits of in-store and online store, with competencies including barcode scan for cellular analysis as well as for cost evaluation, along with in-store cellular vouchers (Westenberg anzd Bethlahmy, 2009). Cisco IBSG Connected Life Market Watch research illustrates, nearly seventy percent of users