Acceptance of mobile services - insights from the Swedish market for mobile telephony

The main purpose of the paper is to investigate young peoples’ perspectives on mobile services in order to shed light on the acceptance of mobile services. The knowledge of and interest in mobile services of individuals using such services is analyzed. A second objective is to investigate the reasons for using/not using mobile services. In-depth focus group interviews and secondary empirical data provide the main data. Concerning the youth’s general knowledge of and interest in mobile services, the results point to six things: young people show a low demand for many mobile services, there is a demand for extended, established mobile services, like SMS, the interest in the new services vary, there is low interest in active information search, there is little knowledge of the enabling technology, and the understanding of the pricing is generally low. As concerns reasons for and against usage of mobile services, results point to four central aspects: many individuals could present clearly defined needs for certain services, many indicated an interest in "community usage" of mobile services, they experienced the prices of mobile services to be a hinder for usage, and technology placed limitations on the usage. The paper discusses practical implications on the acceptance of mobile services.Mobile services; mobility; focus groups; telecommunications; wireless; knowledge

Advertising and brand trust: perspectives from the UK and Italy

The creation of a trusting brand identity through advertising has received relatively little attention in European marketing research. We explore this relationship by undertaking focus group research in the UK and Italy to identify the characteristics of print advertisements perceived as portraying a trusting image. The results show that advertisements that are simple, straightforward and clear are perceived as being more trusting. However, findings also show some differences between our national samples in relation to factors such as colour perception and consumer ethnocentrism. Young consumers are also quite critical of current advertising efforts in building a trusting brand image.

The Next Paradigm Shift in the Mobile Ecosystem: Mobile Social Computing and the Increasing Relevance of Users

Social computing has become the paradigm for the increasingly relevant role of users in the Internet world. In this paper, it is argued that mobile social computing will eventually cause an even bigger impact in the mobile ecosystem. We are already at the beginning of the "transference" of a significant part of Internet social computing usage to the mobile domain, where users are no longer passive consumers of content andapplications, but co-creators and even innovators of them. However, mobile social computing will go one step further in the contribution to the development of the mobile ecosystem, since it will put the many situations of users' daily activities at the centre stage. To prove this case, this paper gathers available data and evidence on the patterns of mobile social computing usage and discusses user innovation and user empowerment in the framework of the current mobile ecosystem.Mobile social computing, user innovation, mobile ecosystem.

Consumer Choice Model of Mobile Banking

Research in the adoption of mobile banking (m-banking) has not offered a comprehensive explanation of low demand for the service. This paper proposes a theoretical model to account for the explanations of the consumer’s choice whether to adopt m-banking or not. The model underlies the cognitive processes of reasoning, referencing and contextualising, as postulated in the behavioural decision making. The proposed theoretical framework is based on a review of literature from services marketing, behavioural economics and information systems

The adoption of mobile commerce services by individuals: A Current State of the Literature

The lack of strong market growth in most Mobile Commerce markets indicates that improved functionality, affordability, and availability of mobile technology do not lead automatically to wide-spread adoption of these services. Therefore, developing an understanding of the factors that influence end-user (consumer) behaviour and acceptance of new mobile services is important at this early stage of the mobile evolution because consumer acceptance is a critical foundation for the continued expansion of the market for mobile services. In this paper we analyse and synthesise the existing literature which focuses on the factors that impact the adoption of mobile commerce services by individuals. We develop an innovative framework to guide this analysis and review 100 studies. Results show a clear imbalance in the existing literature and bias towards some types of adoption factors in favour of other equally important factors

The Industry and Policy Context for Digital Games for Empowerment and Inclusion:Market Analysis, Future Prospects and Key Challenges in Videogames, Serious Games and Gamification

The effective use of digital games for empowerment and social inclusion (DGEI) of people and communities at risk of exclusion will be shaped by, and may influence the development of a range of sectors that supply products, services, technology and research. The principal industries that would appear to be implicated are the 'videogames' industry, and an emerging 'serious games' industry. The videogames industry is an ecosystem of developers, publishers and other service providers drawn from the interactive media, software and broader ICT industry that services the mainstream leisure market in games, The 'serious games' industry is a rather fragmented and growing network of firms, users, research and policy makers from a variety of sectors. This emerging industry is are trying to develop knowledge, products, services and a market for the use of digital games, and products inspired by digital games, for a range of non-leisure applications. This report provides a summary of the state of play of these industries, their trajectories and the challenges they face. It also analyses the contribution they could make to exploiting digital games for empowerment and social inclusion. Finally, it explores existing policy towards activities in these industries and markets, and draws conclusions as to the future policy relevance of engaging with them to support innovation and uptake of effective digital game-based approaches to empowerment and social inclusion.JRC.J.3-Information Societ

UNDERSTANDING USER PERCEPTIONS AND PREFERENCES FOR MASS-MARKET INFORMATION SYSTEMS – LEVERAGING MARKET RESEARCH TECHNIQUES AND EXAMPLES IN PRIVACY-AWARE DESIGN

With cloud and mobile computing, a new category of software products emerges as mass-market information systems (IS) that addresses distributed and heterogeneous end-users. Understanding user requirements and the factors that drive user adoption are crucial for successful design of such systems. IS research has suggested several theories and models to explain user adoption and intentions to use, among them the IS Success Model and the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM). Although these approaches contribute to theoretical understanding of the adoption and use of IS in mass-markets, they are criticized for not being able to drive actionable insights on IS design as they consider the IT artifact as a black-box (i.e., they do not sufficiently address the system internal characteristics). We argue that IS needs to embrace market research techniques to understand and empirically assess user preferences and perceptions in order to integrate the "voice of the customer" in a mass-market scenario. More specifically, conjoint analysis (CA), from market research, can add user preference measurements for designing high-utility IS. CA has gained popularity in IS research, however little guidance is provided for its application in the domain. We aim at supporting the design of mass-market IS by establishing a reliable understanding of consumer’s preferences for multiple factors combing functional, non-functional and economic aspects. The results include a “Framework for Conjoint Analysis Studies in IS” and methodological guidance for applying CA. We apply our findings to the privacy-aware design of mass-market IS and evaluate their implications on user adoption. We contribute to both academia and practice. For academia, we contribute to a more nuanced conceptualization of the IT artifact (i.e., system) through a feature-oriented lens and a preference-based approach. We provide methodological guidelines that support researchers in studying user perceptions and preferences for design variations and extending that to adoption. Moreover, the empirical studies for privacy- aware design contribute to a better understanding of the domain specific applications of CA for IS design and evaluation with a nuanced assessment of user preferences for privacy-preserving features. For practice, we propose guidelines for integrating the voice of the customer for successful IS design. -- Les technologies cloud et mobiles ont fait émerger une nouvelle catégorie de produits informatiques qui s’adressent à des utilisateurs hétérogènes par le biais de systèmes d'information (SI) distribués. Les termes “SI de masse” sont employés pour désigner ces nouveaux systèmes. Une conception réussie de ceux-ci passe par une phase essentielle de compréhension des besoins et des facteurs d'adoption des utilisateurs. Pour ce faire, la recherche en SI suggère plusieurs théories et modèles tels que le “IS Success Model” et le “Technology Acceptance Model”. Bien que ces approches contribuent à la compréhension théorique de l'adoption et de l'utilisation des SI de masse, elles sont critiquées pour ne pas être en mesure de fournir des informations exploitables sur la conception de SI car elles considèrent l'artefact informatique comme une boîte noire. En d’autres termes, ces approches ne traitent pas suffisamment des caractéristiques internes du système. Nous soutenons que la recherche en SI doit adopter des techniques d'étude de marché afin de mieux intégrer les exigences du client (“Voice of Customer”) dans un scénario de marché de masse. Plus précisément, l'analyse conjointe (AC), issue de la recherche sur les consommateurs, peut contribuer au développement de système SI à forte valeur d'usage. Si l’AC a gagné en popularité au sein de la recherche en SI, des recommandations quant à son utilisation dans ce domaine restent rares. Nous entendons soutenir la conception de SI de masse en facilitant une identification fiable des préférences des consommateurs sur de multiples facteurs combinant des aspects fonctionnels, non-fonctionnels et économiques. Les résultats comprennent un “Cadre de référence pour les études d'analyse conjointe en SI” et des recommandations méthodologiques pour l'application de l’AC. Nous avons utilisé ces contributions pour concevoir un SI de masse particulièrement sensible au respect de la vie privée des utilisateurs et nous avons évalué l’impact de nos recherches sur l'adoption de ce système par ses utilisateurs. Ainsi, notre travail contribue tant à la théorie qu’à la pratique des SI. Pour le monde universitaire, nous contribuons en proposant une conceptualisation plus nuancée de l'artefact informatique (c'est-à-dire du système) à travers le prisme des fonctionnalités et par une approche basée sur les préférences utilisateurs. Par ailleurs, les chercheurs peuvent également s'appuyer sur nos directives méthodologiques pour étudier les perceptions et les préférences des utilisateurs pour différentes variations de conception et étendre cela à l'adoption. De plus, nos études empiriques sur la conception d’un SI de masse sensible au respect de la vie privée des utilisateurs contribuent à une meilleure compréhension de l’application des techniques CA dans ce domaine spécifique. Nos études incluent notamment une évaluation nuancée des préférences des utilisateurs sur des fonctionnalités de protection de la vie privée. Pour les praticiens, nous proposons des lignes directrices qui permettent d’intégrer les exigences des clients afin de concevoir un SI réussi

Leveraging Market Research Techniques in IS – A Review of Conjoint Analysis in IS Research

With the increasing importance of mass-market information systems (IS), understanding individual user preferences for IS design and adoption is essential. However, this has been a challenging task due to the complexity of balancing functional, non-functional, and economic requirements. Conjoint analysis (CA), a marketing research technique, estimates user preferences by measuring tradeoffs between products attributes. Although the number of studies applying CA in IS has increased in the past years, we still lack fundamental discussion on its use in our discipline. We review the existing CA studies in IS with regard to the application areas and methodological choices along the CA procedure. Based on this review, we develop a reference framework for application areas in IS that serves as foundation for future studies. We argue that CA can be leveraged in requirements management, business model design, and systems evaluation. As future research opportunities, we see domain-specific adaptations e.g., user preference models