From MCom Visions to Mobile Value Services

The first papers on mobile commerce were offered to the Bled conference commencing in 2000. Initially, they were not received with enthusiasm; the reviewers were rather sceptical as to the research methods used and the visions of a global m-commerce offered. Nevertheless, the first panel sessions were overcrowded and the eBled organizers quickly recognized a new and exciting movement taking shape. The rest is – as the saying goes – history. There are around 6 billion mobile phone users in the world but the mobile services in actual use are – besides voice calls and SMS – rather few (at least in comparison to the hype around smart phones). Based on our experience from annual series of consumer studies we argue that there are fundamental misunderstandings in relation to both the mobile service concept and the basis for building user value. By following the development of mobile technology over a 10 year interval we have found out – much to our surprise - that not much has changed in the actual use of mobile services despite the fact that we have had about three generations of mobile phones during these 10 years. We have summarized insight from panels run at the eBled conferences and from a number of papers presented at the conference and worked out a description of the development of mobile commerce and mobile services

Flawless devices, faulty users: Finnish young adults’ representations of smartphone usage

Finnish smartphone users lead the global statistics of data usage. This makes them an ideal consumer group to research technology consumption practices. It has been estimated that consumers use their smartphones as much as one third of the time that they are awake. The device has become essential in everyday life as consumers have it always with them and it is always on. Smartphone usage has been researched for example in terms of technology adaptation and desired functionalities, but the research on consumers’ emotions towards technology is limited. The focus of this study is especially in the contradictions and paradoxes that Finnish young adults express in their narratives of theirsmartphones and smartphone usage. Past research on technology paradoxes, information technology development, postmodern consumption culture and social constructivism on technology serve as theoretical background for the study. This study has been done by using qualitative research methods. The data consists of ten interviews and projective techniques including sentence compilations and autodriving. Young Finnish adults who live in big cities and have high education were selected for the interviews, as statistically they are heavy users of smartphones, thus making them interesting subject of technology paradox research. The findings of this study outline the major mismatch in consumers’ narratives: they perceive their smartphones as useful and capable devices but consider their own smartphone consumption as incapable and counterproductive, which results into feelings of distress, anxiety and guilt. This misusage appears in multiple forms, interpreted in four themes of guilt: using smartphones to procrastinate, damaging meaningful social relations with smartphone usage, misusing or overdosing the massive amount of content and not meeting the expectations to be available. The narrative of flawless device and faulty user has implications both for consumer research and for management. The main contribution of this study is to widen the focus of academic legacy from the paradoxes of technology to the paradoxes of technology consumption. The study portrays the shift from consumers’ perceptions of their smartphones as devices to perceptions of themselves as smartphone users. This offers a fruitful basis for further research on technology consumption, which is an inseparable part of postmodern life

PIM APPLICATIONS -- An Explorative Study on Benefits and Barriers

In this exploratory study, we look into the emerging usage of Personal Information Management (PIM) applications on mobile devices. We collected data in two rounds of empirical investigation: first, with pilot users in an organization providing PIM services, then, in customer companies subscribing to these services. Our findings suggest that the benefits of PIM applications are mostly related to the users’ personal work: planning schedules and work tasks, making mobile communication even easier, and increasing flexibility, and that the benefits for companies are mainly realized through the users’ benefits. There are, however, still a range of barriers, ranging from difficulties in use and technical limitations to organizational level security concerns