The Emergence of M-Commerce - Example

Introduction The coming of the new millennium has brought new and more challenging technologies. Different forms of communications such as Internet, mobile phones and SMS, Internet chat or MIRCs, and e-groups penetrated majority of the countries around the world. Communication through computer – generated networks became very visible. This enables any individual to talk with someone you cannot see in a face-to-face basis, to buy something and have it delivered without having to go out of your home, to research for any information with just one click on the Internet, or to meet new friends. Because of this, various forms of businesses found a new and easier way to reach for their target consumers through the Internet. The old means of market researching is now commonly done through Internet. In the same manner, reaching out to one’s target market has been made easier by the Internet. However, another emerging form of getting through your customer and vice versa has now being introduced and this is thru mobile commerce (m-commerce). M-commerce (mobile commerce) is now widely recognized not as a variation of e-commerce, but, as a natural variation. The increasing pervasiveness of sophisticated mobile devices, with ever increasing features and connectivity options, has lead to much speculation with regard to the application of current m-commerce technologies as well as the future of m-commerce. Current examples of m-commerce include location based services (such as a ‘nearest cinema’ locating service) and traditional e-commerce applications that are carried out on a mobile device (such as purchasing goods from an e-commerce website). The latter has only recently become possible due to improvements in mobile device technology and the increase in bandwidth rates available. This paper discusses issues concerned with m-commerce technologies and their various applications. Also, limiting factors of m-commerce applications are investigated with an emphasis on the key issue of the acceptability of a new technology and its uses. Finally, some emerging markets for m-commerce are identified with the conclusion that m-commerce will become indistinguishable from e-commerce except in specific instances. M-Commerce: Defined “Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is the term that refers to the impending financial revolution, and can be defined as the use of mobile telephony infrastructure to obtain or deliver data related to a commercial transaction between two or more parties. It includes the buying and selling of goods over the Internet from a mobile phone.” (Dennis) As stated above, m-commerce is a means to continue doing the business through the use of a simple mobile telephony device. M-commerce, a totally different structure from e-commerce, despite its being too ‘young’ in the industry has already captured a big market in the business field. In Europe alone, it is estimated that 23billion people have been expected to use the m-commerce in 2003. This is because the use of mobile devices for calls, text message and internet has becoming very popular. In return, the giant mobile phone manufactures such as Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola have been racing to release and further upgrade the phones they are making into multi function ones, which can accommodate internet browsing, aside from the normal call and text messaging functions (Dennis). “The forecasted growth of m-commerce hinges heavily on the availability of these mobile devices. Much like their development, m-commerce is in its infancy but is at its most developed in Europe and Japan, where mobile telephony standardization has given an 18-month head start over the USA. (Dennis).” Mobile phone manufacturers all over the world have been trying their best to create phones that will incorporate the use of web browsing. In Europe, mobile phones presented to the public can already do payments and other transactions thru mobile phones. In France, mobile phones are already outfitted to do credit card transactions as there is slot where credit cards can be inserted and accessed account. In England, on the other hand, mobile customers are already able to brows most of the company websites and do purchases for basic items like appliances, wines, CDs, etc. (Dennis). Mobile Phone and Internet Users Internet and mobile phones are two of the most highly used mode of communication now a days. Further more, these two means are also the top most priority in doing business to some of the major investors, consumers or business acumens worldwide. There is high and frequent usage of mobile phones anywhere in the world. In Asia, mobile penetration is 110% in Hong Kong of 6.8 million populations, Japan 70% of 127 million and Korea with 75% of 48 million. People tend to think that they should do fastest in sending message if they want to be responded fast. Some of the youth use this in having a girlfriend, some of the most mature ones use cell phone in conducting business. Meanwhile, Internet has indeed gone from near-invisibility to near-ubiquity in little more than a year (Cerf, 1997). Most of the higher income earners business establishments today are those pertaining to computer, telecommunications and Internet industries. To quote what Sturges (1998) has cited: “… The global, public access network, or the Internet, is the sum of all such networks that are in communication with one another. The significant thing about the Internet as a carrier of information is that it has no center and has no controlling authority. It grows in an organic way as more networks are added. The early Internet had a primarily military function in the USA, and its distributed structure, both in terms of communication routes and information input, make it resistant to military attack or control…”. Internet has indeed become globally part of our every day lives. From merely buying the basic necessities in life to having to get airplane flights. It has been widely useful to the students through their continuous access to faster, easier and reliable sources of different information. It has been very significant to business-oriented individuals because of its wide range of marketing and sales strategies being offered by different web owners. It has been very useful even to the simplest member of the society for you can even sell and buy things from the Internet or get credible information regarding a certain product. Yes, Internet is very much useful to everybody, and we can safely say that one is loosing such big opportunity if he or she has not been accessing to Internet. From a study conducted on July of 1996, the estimated numbers of Internet hosts for each continent are (Doyle, 1996): Table 1. Estimated Hosts Number Meanwhile, a recent survey done by Survey.Net has disclosed that out of 2974 total respondents (taken last May 23, 2004), majority of the people who accessed with the Internet are those ages ranging from 22 – 25 years old. Meanwhile, most of the respondents (26.2%) were presently enrolled in college (as to their highest degree attained) (Survey, 2003). The details are as follow: And when we speak of gender who uses mostly of the functions of Internet, there was this study conducted which showed that there was a big difference on numbers between the male and female Internet users. Majority of the men (70%0 prominently uses the Internet than women. We can assume that men are more technologically inclined than women, while women are more personal and socially interactive. Fig. 3. Gender Relationship on Frequency of Internet User (Doyle, 1996) As for the future, it is quite risky to predict the future of something as dynamic as the Internet, and who can deny that? There are at least a dozen companies in one single area who are providing services using Internet and the number will surely continuously increase. The projections of Internet-related business could range up to $50 billion at the end of the decade. This is still small compared to the total telecommunications businesses we now have, but its rapid growth and the rich evolution of new products and services clearly suggest that the unpretentious research investments of the federal government have paid off in countless ways, not all of them are simply monetary. Furthermore, there is enough reason to believe that the Internet will transform and evolve education, businesses, government services, and personal activities in ways that are incomprehensible as for today (Cerf, 1997). Thus, it cannot be denied that if the number mobile and internet users around the world will be combined, there really is a big market and a business which make use of these two will surely flourish. Securities and Boundaries Security is by far the biggest concern surrounding online transactions, with consumers worrying that hackers will get into their account and spend their money (The Pros and the cons, 2004). Credit cards are prone to security issues, especially when it comes to online transactions. The details found in credit cards aren’t really embedded in secure channels. Anyone who manages to intercept the data found on your credit card can easily use your line of credit for their own purposes. As a result, making you suffer for the mistakes that you never done (The Pros and Cons of Using a Credit Card, 2006). Since both the Internet and the mobile phone is a public network, it is necessary for the businesses offering m-commerce business transactions to safeguard the company’s and the consumers’ banking information, credit card numbers, Social Security number and other information (What you should know about internet banking, 2007). Criminals don't always need to have shotguns and masks to threat and rob money; it only takes a social security number, or a pre-approved credit card application from trash to make things according to their wicked way (ID Theft, 2004). Some consumers have had credit card numbers and Social Security numbers stolen and used fraudulently or identity theft. By taking reasonable steps to protect important personal information, this can mitigate the chance that it may be stolen (What you should know about internet banking, 2007) by identity thieves. Credit card numbers, driver’s license numbers, social security numbers, date of birth, and other personal identification can net criminals thousands of dollars in a very short period of time. Most often, identity thieves will obtain your personal identification numbers and obtain credit in your name by having credit cards, goods or services delivered to their address or mail drop. Since the bills for charges incurred are sent to the thief's address, the consumers will be unaware that debt is mounting up in their name until the collections department tracks them down (McGoey, 2007). With all these concerns on m-commerce security there are several approaches and step to consider while starting up an m-commerce business dealings. First is creating a catalogue. In the e-catalogue, goods are presented as images with text descriptions, prices and product options. Any m-commerce definition would have to include an understanding of databases. Instead of "printing" each product web page uniquely, only one page is made, and filled in by a database. This means that instead of a thousand pages for a thousand products, one page only is used - called a template. The template has empty places in it (like a picture space, a price space, a description space etc.) that are filled in from the database. The information needed to call the right information into the placeholders is contained in the link to the product (McGoey, 2007). It is also necessary to create a navigation system. Typically the first set of links will be product categories and will build a list of individual items in that category, as links. These links in turn will call the exact product within the template page. This system is called drilling down (McGoey, 2007). When a visitor clicks the buy button, the product id number is placed in her shopping basket. This is a space in the computers memory created especially for this user. Additional commands can add or delete numbers in this space until the visitor is ready to purchase. When the visitor proceeds to the checkout, her details are moved from the temporary memory space into an empty part of the database, along with a list of what she is buying, the prices, options etc. (McGoey, 2007). And, of course, there are the terms of payment. There are several methods of taking online payments, all involve a secure socket layer (SSL). Once captured, the credit card number is stored for retrieval later to be processed through ordinary PDQ facilities (swiping machine or telephone), or cleared over the Internet by a specialist-clearing house who contacts the visitors’ bank (McGoey, 2007) After the payment is actually cleared online, the clearing house will send your website confirmation so that a receipt and/or order confirmation can be automatically generated for the customer. This can be done by writing an online program that runs on the web server (McGoey, 2007). The final part deals with alerting the website owner that an order has been placed. This can be done by providing a control panel on the website where new entries in the database are displayed, or simply by sending an e-mail with the information on it to a regular inbox. If the information is going to include a credit card number, then a control panel page on a secure socket layer (SSL) must be used, as e-mail is not secure (McGoey, 2007). The website owner may want to provide his customer with order tracking facilities. This is done by simply adding a message to the database record and sending the client a unique id number that allows her access to only her record set (McGoey, 2007). There really are bigger responsibilities for the business owners when the m-commerce approach is used primarily because the mode of doing the business can become very public, thus presenting high risk for identity thefts. But what is appalling with these measures to ensure security is the fact that e-commerce does the same. E-commerce is done through the internet and is facing the same form of issues when regards to trust and security of the consumers. Conclusion Indeed, m-commerce as a business method has a very good market thus presented with a very productive future. As people become more technological and somewhat dependent on information technology, the more chances that people will be include to using m-commerce in their business dealings. However, the fact still lies that m-commerce is and will always be interconnected, related or even compared to e-commerce. The means of conducting the transaction is almost the same (m-commerce is thru the use of mobile phone while e-commerce is thru the computers) and can even be interchanged. In the same manner that the issues on securities and/or threats of identity threats are also being faced by these two form of business transactions. Sources: Cerf, Vinton G. “Computer Networking: Global Infrastructure for the 21st Century”. 1997. viewed Dennis, Roger. “The M Commerce Rainbow” viewed http://www.rogerdennis.com/Articles/fs_mobile_rainbow.pdf Doyle, Mary.’ Women in the Internet.” February 1, 1996. viewed Sturges, Paul. “Freedom of Expression and the Communication Networks.” 1998. viewed “Survey: Intellectual Property Rights”. 2003. Survey.Net. viewed Hoque, Faisal. E-Enterprise _ Business Models, Architectures and Components. Cambridge University Press. 2000. McGoey, C. (2007).Identity Thefts Facts: Fastest Growing Crime World. Retrieved from http://www.crimedoctor.com/identity.htm The Pros and Cons of Using a Credit Card. (2006). Ezilon infobase. Retrieved from http://www.ezilon.com/information/article_13635.shtml What you should know about internet banking. (2007). Retrieved from http://www.chicagofed.org/consumer_information/what_you_should_know_about_internet_banking.cfm Read More