Mobile Platforms, Design, and Apps for Social Commerce

The concept of the Web 2.0 and other online tools is an increasingly much discussed topic in the business management (Jones et al., 2009; Jones an d Iredale 2009) and social sciences (Beer and Burrows, 2007; Beer, 2008; Snee, 2008). Academic research on Web 2.0 and social media is accumulating rapidly. In this chapter we make a literature review, regarding the role of Web 2.0 components and other online tools that are used in order to improve channels of communications between brands and their potential customers. Specifically, this section describes the emerging literature on Web 2.0 and the transition from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. The rapid penetration of the Internet, during the past decade has offered consumers many new opportunities. Besides the obvious use of communicating without boundaries and searching information, it is nowadays possible to express thoughts and feelings through social media sites. Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) define social media as “a group of Internet-based applications that build on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0 and allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content”. Through the growing popularity of these technologies in society (Dickey and Lewis, 2010), firms are increasingly using them as a part of their brand building activities and marketing and have changed the emphasis from being consumption-based towards becoming collaborative and interactive, creating new opportunities for engagement between publics and firms (Gallaugher and Ransbotham, 2010; Henderson and Bowley, 2010). In this sense, Kaplan and Haenlein, 2010 defined Web 2.0 as “a platform whereby content and applications are no longer created and published by individual, but instead are continuously modified by all users in a participatory and collaborative fashion”. Social media rapid expansion seems to be on a par with the mobile connectivity, which is being expanding at exponential rates over the last decade. Indeed, over the past decade, mobile devices such as tablet computers and smart phones have become such an important part of our lives that it is hard to think functioning without them. Specifically, we define mobile marketing as “any marketing activity conducted through a ubiquitous network to which customers are constantly connected using a personal mobile device” (Kaplan, 2012). In this sense, Kaplan and Haenlein (2010) includes mobile connectivity in the social media definition, to state that mobile social media may be defined as “a group of mobile marketing applications that allow the creation and exchange of User Generated Content”. Early Internet applications were static without the opportunity to interact in long-term conversations (Beer and Burrows, 2007; Harwood, 2006). In contrast, the rapid penetration of social media or Web 2.0 applications, make consumers worldwide to be able to interact with organization and firms and each other, to contribute to discussions, to give feedback, to see and hear streaming video and audio on the multimedia platform that become known as WWW (World Wide Web) (Berthon et al., 2012; Beer and Burrows, 2007; Dearstyne, 2007). In traditional market exchange, the seller largely controlled the decisions of marketing mix, relating to product, promotion, price and place and developed strategies, to meet the needs of buyers, while social media allocates to buyers some control regarding these decisions. By changing how buyers and sellers interact and connect, social media enable buyers to join in making strategic choices, together with sellers and co-create value for them. Social media enable buyers to participate in value adding and marketing mix decisions, by interacting and connecting with sellers, as well as with other customers, and even with non – customers (Sashi, 2012). Additionally, in this chapter, we analyze Web 2.0 components and other online tools such as social media, blogs, wikis, bookmarking sites (i.e., del.ico.us), virtual worlds (i.e., Second Life), micro-blogging sites (i.e., Twitter), video sites (i.e., Youtube) and social networking sites (i.e., Facebook, LinkedIn, Myspace) (Wirtz et al., 2010) which change the roles of sellers and buyers and introduce a shift towards collective and interactive media (Constantinides and Fountain, 2008; Khor and Marsh, 2006). Social media, or Web 2.0, are a collection of new Internet applications that have given the general public the tools to participate, connect, generate content, share information and collaborate. Specifically, Constantinides and Fountain (2009) identified the following categories of social media: Social network: Applications allowing users to build personal Web sites accessible to other users for exchange of personal content and communication; Blogs: Comprising individuals’, or firms’ online journals, often combined with audio or video podcasts; Forums/bulletin boards: Sites for exchanging ideas and information, usually around special interests; Content communities: Web sites organizing and sharing particular types of content; Content aggregators: Applications allowing users to fully customize the Web content they wish to access. Concluding, due to the increasing use of mobile and wireless communication, we aim to analyze the role and the new opportunities of Web 2.0 and other online tools for brands and customers-users. According to the literature review and relevant research, the authors investigate the active participation of users through discussing, communicating, commenting and posting (blogs, social media sites and other Web 2.0 tools). Finally, we make some hypotheses that need further quantitative research, regarding the use of Web 2.0 tools by firms and organizations, in order to achieve their goals, in terms of sales and user engagement.

REFERENCES Beer, D. (2008), “Making friends with Jarvis Cocker: music culture in the context of Web 2.0”, Cultural Sociology, Vol.2,No.2, pp.222-41 Beer, D and Burrows, R., (2007), “Sociology and, of and in Web 2.0:some initial considerations», Sociological Research Online 30 September 2007, available at www.socresonline.org.uk/12/5/17.html (accessed 6/8/2010) Berthon P.R., Pitt L.,F., Plangger K., Shapiro D., (2012) Marketing meets Web 2.0 social media, and creative consumers: Implications for international marketing strategy, Business Horizons, 55, 261-271 Constantinides, E. and Fountain. S.J (2008) “ Web 2.0 :conceptual foundations and marketing issues”, Journal of Direct, Data, and Digital Marketing Practice, Vol.9, No.3 pp.231-44 Dearstyne, B.W.(2007), “Blogs, mashups and wikis: Oh my!” Information Management Journal, Vol.41, No.4, pp.25-33 Dickey, I. J., & Lewis, W. F. (2010) The Evolution (Revolution) of Social Media and Social Networking as a Necessary Topic in the Marketing Curriculum: A Case for Integrating Social Media into Marketing Classes, Society for Marketing Advances (pp. 140–143). Gallaugher, J., & Ransbotham,S., (2010) Social Media and Customer Dialog Management at Starbucks, MIS Quarterly Executive, Vol. 9, No. 4 Harwood, S., (2006) “The power of 2.0”, Revolution Henderson A., and Bowley R., (2010), Authentic dialogue? The role of “friendship” in a social media recruitment campaign, Journal of Communication Management, Vol. 14, No.3 Jones,B and Iredale, N.(2009) “Entrepreneurship education and Web 2.0”Journal of Research in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, Vol.11 No.1 pp.66-77 Jones, B., Temperley, J. and Lima, A. (2009) “Corporate reputation in the era of Web 2.0: The case of Primark”, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol.25, Nos 9-10, pp.927-39 Kaplan, A.M., (2012) If you love something, let it go mobile: Mobile marketing and mobile social media 4x4, Business Horizons, 55, pp. 129-139 Kaplan, A.M., and Haenlain, M., (2010). Users of the world unite! The challenges and opportunities of Social Media., Business Horizons, 53(1), pp59-68 Khor, Z., and Marsh, P. (2006), Life Online: The Web in 2020, Social Issues research Centre, on behalf of Rackspace Managed Hosting, Oxford Sashi C.M.,(2012). Customer engagement buyer-seller relationships, and social media, Management Decision, Vol. 50, No 2, pp 253-272 Snee, H.(2008), “Web 2.0 as a social science research tool”, The British library, November 2008, available at : www.bl.uk/reshelp/bldept/socsci/socint/Web2/Web2.pdf (accessed 6/8/2010) Wirtz, B.W., Schilke, O. and Ullrich, S. (2010) Strategic development of business models: implications of the Web 2.0 for creating value on the Internet”, Long Range Planning, Vol.43, Nos 2-3, pp. 272-90.

Mobile Commerce

1- Mobile Commerce Technologies and management In this chapter we will stated that general introduction of Mobile commerce, foundational concepts of m- commerce and technologies. We also review recently mobile commerce researchs and applications and associate with management practices. Since mobile commerce involves a range of technologies, we gather these technologies in one paper and clarify areas of usage by managers. 2- E-commerce/M-commerce and Customer behaviour In today’s business markets, customer behaviour does not only apply physical stores, but also rapidly apply online shopping due to efficiency and speed. Thus online shopping is rapidly contiounus growing and what companys have to do is to understand how online customers’ behaviours are shaped to satisfy their requirements. In this title, buyers and sellers behaviours, customer values and components in E-commerce/M-commerce, Influencing factors of customer behaviour in online shopping, impact of internet on consumer behaviours will be stated. Furthermore we will be examined all E-commerce/M-commerce and customer behaviour studies and appears all factors which are found in literature and make up compherensive study. 3- E-Commerce/M-Commerce and Human Resource Management E commerce changes the way of people perform their jobs the way of managing people in workplace. Today’s business environment every company are conducted by technology. HRM have to expand skilss of employers to make better use of technology. In this title, we will determine how e-commerce and m-commerce effects and shapes human resource management activities. We will discuss the new roles of HRM and we will figure out HRM strategies associated with E-commerce. We also determine the impact of e-commerce/m-commerce on employment. 4- Mobile Customer relationship management Due to rapid development of technology, demands of customers are quickly changing. One of the current issues of customer relationship management is to meet requirements of customers in real time and fast. Thus companies have to establish online customer relationship management. Today every potential and current customers have mobile phones so using mobile for CRM is one of the best tool to do it. In this title, we will state CRM applications through mobile tools, we also determine the advantages of mobile crm for companies to establish and sustain better relationships with customers. It will be determined that development of CRM and CRM applications, critical success and failure factors of CRM, value of CRM in social media and social media tools for CRM in this title. 5- Customer loyalty, satisfaction, and retention Under the title of customer loyalty, satisfaction and retention, First we will state the definitions, components and deminsions of the terms. We will figure out the relationships between loyalty, satisfaction and retention. In addition, these terms will be associated with e- commerce and m-commerce. We review the literature how m-commerce can achieve loyal, satisfied customers and figure out determinanats of E-commerce customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and retention. 6- Online trust and mobile devices Whereas the internet provides many opportunites for customer relationships for companies, Trust is an essential to make the relationships better and sustainable. Customers are not willing to provide personal informations to a web site since they do have lack of trust in sites. Thus building a trust with customers is significant factor for companies. Under the title of online trust and mobile devices, we will mention about what is online trust? What are the factors of effecting customer trust in online shopping? We will stated the frameworks for M-commerce trust building and we will discuss the trust elements and figure out trust factors which are significant for customers. 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Does consumer behavior in M-commerce is fundamentally different from its behavior on E-commerce? 


The present chapter aims to review the relevent littertaure to examine differences in consumer’s responses to M-commerce compared to conventional E-commerce.

Additional Information

MOBILE COMMERCE: HISTORY AND KEY DEVELOPMENT STATISTICS APPREHENSION FRAMEWORK OF THE CONSUMER BEHAVIOR IN M-COMMERCE The impact of mobile technology on consumer behavior Determinant variables of consumer behavior in M-commerce Moderator variables of consumer behavior in M-commerce

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Heuristic evaluation on m-learning: a comparative analysis of two sets 


The popularization of mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones, fostered at the beginning of this decade has reflected significant impacts on society and made people's daily lives more dependent on the convenience provided by this type of technology. In fact, technological evolution manifests according to the context of each epoch and is able to transform the way society behaves, an intrinsic process to human progress. In this scenario, the influences established by technology in the educational sphere from the emergence of Virtual Environments for Teaching and Learning in the 1990s, and more recently in 2012, with the advent of MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) has reconfigured the way people acquire knowledge. The learning mediated by platforms of this type is often seen as appropriate to the expectations of those classified by Prensky (2001) as "digital natives”, the generation born from the 1990s, interested in learning processes that are active, interactive, shared by social communities and based on findings from the error. Obviously, the convenience offered by mobile devices has made these systems gradually migrate from web platforms to mobile applications, inaugurating the category called mobile learning or m-learning. However, lacking appropriate usability design, the interface of a m-learning can, for example, require from its users excessive cognitive load while they perform certain tasks, affecting their learning or increasing drop outs, since usability attributes directly influence user satisfaction. In order to ensure an e-learning interface solid and relevant usability attributes, the heuristic evaluation is an advantageous technique with regard to time and cost. Its an evaluation instrument designed for expert analysis which provides a range of pre-established usability criteria that may identify interactivity problems on projects that require redesign, or lead the appropriate development on new systems (SHNEIDERMAN, 2005, p. 141-142). Although there are recurrent heuristics sets which are characterized as important usability parameters for any type of interface, they are not entirely sufficient when assessing systems that hold mobile characteristics or provide teaching and learning processes. The interest of the authors of this study in deepening the knowledge about how the heuristics reviews have been applied to m-learning applications motivated the search for bibliographies engaged in this issue. However, even though we found studies with heuristics focusing specifically on mobile interfaces or e-learning, it was not possible to find studies that prioritized a unique set for the evaluation on m-learning. Confronting this problem, our study comprises a comparative analysis of the efficiency of two heuristics sets while assessing an m-learning: the set proposed by Mehlenbacher et al. (2005) for mobile interfaces, which in our study has been referred to as "HS1" (Heuristic Set 1); and the set proposed by Neto and Pimentel (2013) specific to the evaluation on e-learning systems, here referred to as "HS2". For the evaluations we used the MOOC EdX application for Android due to its popularity and because it is endowed with complex functionalities such as social dynamics, peer reviews, and asynchronous features. Usability evaluations were performed by 4 evaluators equally divided into two groups, whereas one group used HS1 and the other, HS2. The task given to the evaluators was to identify the greatest possible number of Usability Problems (UPs). In order to make the documentation of the UPs easy and intuitive, we used the structured problem report proposed by Cockton and Woolrych (2001 apud ZAHARIAS; KOUTSABASIS, 2011, p. 50). We consider important to highlight that we didn't intend to choose the best heuristics set over the other, since the validity of their results has already been tested on the types of systems that each of them is intended to. On the contrary, we aimed to identify the most efficient set during the evaluation of a m-learning, as this type of system doesn't count on a defined instrument for heuristic evaluation yet. In order to analyze the results obtained after the heuristic evaluation, based on the report protocol from Zaharias and Koutsabasis (2011), the data were matched with the aspects of coverage, distribution and redundancy; and subsequently with the aspects of context and severity. Therefore, it was found that the heuristics’ pattern of coverage and distribution is similar between the sets and the evaluators, expressed as follows: some heuristics attract a significant number of problems, while others attract few or none. Moreover, the aspect of redundancy didn’t show meaningful numbers that could justify substitution of heuristics in any model. Among the results concerning context, HS1, the set specific to the evaluation on e-learning systems, could not detect significant numbers of usability problems related to educational aspects. Conversely, HS2, the one not comprising heuristics specific to educational aspects, was able to behave efficiently both in the educational and in the system context. Also, the aspect of severity showed marked divergence between the sets and the evaluators, which we believe was due to the subjective nature of this aspect, and which manifestation didn’t allow clear interpretation. Finally, even though, within the limits of this study, HS1 could detect a larger number of usability problems not found by HS2, the results showed that the two sets could extract significant usability problems from the m-learning application analyzed and are, therefore, useful for evaluating interfaces of this sort.

References MEHLENBACHER, B. et al. Usable e-learning: A conceptual model for evaluation and design. Theories, Models, and Processes in HCI, v. 4, p. 1-10, 2005. NETO, O. M.; PIMENTEL, M. G. Heuristics for the Assessment of Interfaces of Mobile Device. Proceedings of the 19th Brazilian symposium on Multimedia and the web. ACM 2013. PRENSKY, Marc. Digital natives, digital immigrants part 1. In: On the horizon, v. 9, n. 5, p. 1-6, 2001. SHNEIDERMAN, B.; PLAISANT, C. Designing the user interface: strategies for effective human-computer interaction. 4. ed. Addison Wesley Publishing Co., 2005. ZAHARIAS, P.; KOUTSABASIS, P. Heuristic evaluation Heuristic evaluation of e-learning courses: a comparative analysis of two e-learning heuristic sets. In: Campus-Wide Information Systems, Vol. 29, Iss: 1, pp. 45 - 60, 2011.

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

mMarketing Opportunities for User Collaborative Environments in Smart Cities 


One of the key characteristics of the evolving information society is the fact that individual users have become actively engaged in the creation of content and in sharing information on the internet, mainly through social networking media. This development taps into “the wisdom of crowds”, because it promotes the creation of all sorts of information content, it enhances the diversity of publicly available information and it increases the amount of topics on which users can find information. Also, users’ opinions and ideas are shared and truly count – anyone can participate and share his views and thoughts about anything. Along this on-line, user collaboration paradigm, we discuss in the proposed chapter a new mMarketing and mCommerce model based on creating a collaborative environment of shoppers that enables the interaction among them (implementing the “wisdom of crowds” principle) as well as with the participating businesses, based on the infrastructures provided by smart cities. This interaction is, loosely, termed collective intelligence. Collective intelligence refers to the data, information, and actions which emerge as a result of the interactions of large numbers of individuals through their mobile devices. This collaboration is supported by the sensing, computational and communications capabilities of modern mobile devices (e.g. mobile phones and tablets). Collective intelligence applications rely on gathering and processing numerous streams of data of various types, such as environmental variables, location coordinates, real-time information, and on-site conditions from large numbers of individuals moving in dispersed geographical locations. This massive creation of information and data creates opportunities for new types of application domains. One target application domain, which combines computational intelligence with the facilities offered by smart cities, appears to offer new opportunities for creating novel applications and services. Our focus is the m-Commerce and m-Marketing domains which lately have attracted much attention mainly due to the increasing popularity, the powerful features and decreasing cost of using mobile devices. According to the business models targeting m-Commerce and m-marketing, an individual connects to and interacts with a site in order to use a service (e.g. ordering tickets, paying electronically, buying goods etc.). Smart cities, on the other hand, are characterized by the existence of Wide Area or Metropolitan wireless networks that connect their citizens at any place within their confines, by dispersed data collection sensor/ad-hoc networks that continuously gather environmental or civic information provided by municipalities and make it available to individuals roaming the city. In the proposed chapter we build upon this smart city/collective intelligence coexistence and propose an m-Commerce/m-marketing model that offers novel business opportunities. In this model, we show how to develop mobile device services that involve individuals and businesses that interact among themselves and the smart city facilities in order to create alerts and useful information about events and commercial activities of broad interest. For instance, individuals may send, in real time, to the service information whether a central parking facility is still empty, if a store has sales and on which products, as well as off-line information about good mCommerce sites. Also, city-related and environmental information can be shared among people in order, for instance, to warn other people about traffic difficulties or the onset of adverse weather conditions at a place of interest. Other individuals may consult this information at any time, even in real-time. Our study will also examine an equally important aspect of this mBusiness model which concerns the privacy of the participating individuals since the data and information they provide to the service may uncover sensitive and/or identifying information about them (e.g. position information). In more detail, the proposed mBusiness model consists of three major components: 1. A smart city environment whose infrastructure will provide the communications means for the exchange of information among businesses and users/customers. 2. Users/customers collectively and collaboratively participating in exchanging service and product information while they roam within the smart city. 3. Service providers and businesses competing for attracting customers using their mobile devices for purchases. 4. A horizontal privacy protection facility for the participating individuals. A user starts by subscribing to the service implementing the collective intelligence model using a registration process to obtain Privacy Preserving Electronic Credentials, which is something like an eIdentities (e.g. X.509 certificates) but with the major difference that it they preserve anonymity while certifying other elements of the holder, e.g. occupation, citizenship, age etc. These credentials will allow, from now on, the user to interact anonymously with the service and shopping network as well as the central service. It also allows the user to uncover specific fields from his credentials allowing partial identification towards a service, if required. For instance, a user may only provide proof of age, place of living (e.g. to prove eligibility for a local sale or offer), occupation etc. without revealing any identifying information. The revealed information may help an eBusiness compute useful analytics without sacrificing a user’s privacy, boosting trust towards mCommerce. Each time a user submits information to the system (e.g. sales information), he is rewarded by a credential-coupon that can be used to prove, anonymously, that the user has contributed useful information related to the city’s commercial activities. The collection of such coupons acts as a reward mechanism to attract massive user participation. Users can also assign a credibility value to the information they submit by revealing, e.g., their profession. Then the submitted information carries tags that report the professions of the users that have reported it. Other users, now, can access this information by proving, only, their registration to the service in a fully anonymous fashion. To this end, they use another special credential in order to provide anonymous proof of their eligibility. Then the users, after obtaining the information submitted by others, can assign a usefulness/trustworthiness value to it. This acts as reputation management mechanism for the participating users so that users revealing useful/trustworthy information ascend the reputation levels faster than others. The reputation level is reflected by another credential that contains a reputation/status level currently assigned to a user. 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Mobile Commerce Technologies and Management 

This chapter explains the overview of mobile commerce (m-commerce); m-commerce and trust; and the current trends and issues with m-commerce. The operation of m-commerce is needed for modern organizations that seek to serve suppliers and customers, increase business performance, strengthen competitiveness, and achieve continuous success in global business. The benefits of m-commerce include the easy purchase process, instant updating of the information, improved clients' satisfaction, cost savings, new opportunities for business, and the ability for the consumers to use it everywhere. Therefore, it is required for modern organizations to investigate their m-commerce, develop a strategic plan to regularly check their practical advancements, and immediately respond to m-commerce needs of customers in modern organizations. The chapter argues that applying m-commerce has the potential to enhance organizational performance and reach strategic goals in global business. INTRODUCTION The rapid expansion of mobile computing technology has been attributed to the fact that a wide variety of companies are increasingly capitalizing on this new innovative business channel, motivated by its unique characteristics of mobility and broad reach which break the barriers of geography and time (Faqih & Jaradat, 2015). The advancement of wireless technologies means that consumers are increasingly coming into contact with a diverse range of mobile services (Huang, Lin, & Fan, 2015). M-commerce has an important influence on business and society in the future (Chen, Li, Chen, & Xu, 2011). The potential of the Internet has been expanded by a new generation of mobile devices toward gaining the rapid growth of m-commerce (Sumita & Yoshii, 2010). In m-commerce, the electronic payment is the most important component (Yang & Chang, 2012). This chapter aims to bridge the gap in the literature on the thorough literature consolidation of m-commerce. The extensive literature of m-commerce provides a contribution to practitioners and researchers by describing the theory and applications of m-commerce in order to maximize the business impact of m-commerce in global business. REVIEW OF LITERATURE Overview of Mobile Commerce Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is an emerging discipline involving the use of mobile computing technologies (Faqih & Jaradat, 2015). Tiwari and Buse (2007) defined m-commerce as any transaction involving the transfer of ownership to use goods and services, which is completed by using mobile access to computer-mediated networks with the support of an electronic device. M-commerce refers to any shopping activities with a monetary value that is conducted via a mobile device (Clarke, 2001). M-payment is a natural evolution of electronic payment, and enables feasible and convenient m-commerce transactions (Mallat, 2007). M-commerce involves the sale of goods, services, and contents via wireless devices, without time and space limitations (Au & Kauffman, 2008). Advanced wireless and mobile technologies facilitate e-commerce conducted from a wired network to a wireless network (Ngai & Gunasekaran, 2007). M-commerce is an extension of e-commerce, whereby the transactions of businesses are conducted in a mobile environment using mobile devices (Chong, Chan, & Ooi, 2012). Feng et al. (2006) have argued that m-commerce is more than an extension of e-commerce due to its differences in interaction styles, usage patterns, and value chain. Unlike e-commerce, m-commerce allows transactions to be conducted through mobile devices (Varshney & Vetter, 2002). M-commerce is much more than mobile e-commerce because it changes the place where demand is created through using the mobile handset’s unique features and brings supply closer to that point (Kemp, 2013). Internet-based commerce can reduce the barriers in conducting business by lowering the cost of extending geographic reach (Kasemsap, 2015a). Connecting information systems and integrating business data can greatly increase the operational efficiency of organization (Kasemsap, 2015b). As a new stage of e-commerce, m-commerce has plenty of unique advantages over e-commerce such as instantaneity, ubiquity, localization, personalization, and identification (Zhang, Zhu, & Liu, 2012). M-commerce is similar to e-commerce except that its transactions are conducted in a wireless network environment via a mobile device (Chong, 2013). With m-commerce, users are no longer bound by geographical constraints as those in e-commerce (Büyüközkan, 2009). M-commerce is an important area for research because of its relative novelty, rapid growth, and potential applications (Barnes, 2002). The adoption of m-commerce is dependent on consumer acceptance of new technologies (Bruner & Kumar, 2003). Network designers, service providers, vendors, and application developers must carefully take the consideration of various users into account to provide improved services and attract them to m-commerce (Pedersen, Methlie, & Thorbjornsen, 2002). Keen and Mackintosh (2001) stated that the demand side of m-commerce is a search for value so that there is a need to build an understanding of the special features of wireless electronic channels that are value-adding from the consumer’s point of view. M-commerce developers and practitioners must understand the consumers’ perception of m-commerce applications in order to deliver the m-commerce service (Chen et al., 2011). Clarke and Flaherty (2003) indicated the four characteristics of m-commerce (i.e., ubiquity, convenience, localization, and personalization). Wu and Hisa (2004) proposed the hypercube innovation model for exploring the characteristics of m-commerce with focus on the three perspectives (i.e., changes in business models, changes in core components, and stakeholders). With mobile capability, the access to information is ubiquitous. Positioning technology such as the global positioning system (GPS) provides localization services for mobile devices (Rao & Minakakis 2003), which has facilitated the development of location-based applications that directly connect to a user’s location. Localization and ubiquity implies that there is profound opportunity for businesses to engage consumers anytime and anyplace (Huang et al., 2015). Mobile Commerce and Trust The growth of m-commerce has motivated a better understanding of how trust can be built on a mobile device (Li & Yeh, 2010). Trust becomes a critical topic for research because it plays an essential role in creating expected outcome as a result of transaction (Pavlou, 2003). Gaining trust reduces fears and worries (Pavlou & Gefen, 2004). Trust is an important element which affects consumer decisions to adopt technologies such as e-commerce (Holsapple & Sasidharan, 2005). Trust is defined as whether users are willing to become vulnerable to the m-commerce providers after considering their characteristics (e.g., security and brand name) (Chong et al., 2012). Salam et al. (2003) stated that trust can be developed by the trustee (i.e., the party being trusted) to positively create trustor (i.e., the party placing trust) perception that the trustee possesses characteristics that would benefit the trustor. Such perception is important to reduce the uncertainty and the risks of transaction (Doney & Cannon, 1997). McKnight et al. (2002) defined trust in terms of ability, integrity, and benevolence. Ability is related to skills and competencies of the trustee in a specific context. Integrity concerns if the trustee follows moral and ethical principles that are deemed acceptable by the trustor. Benevolence concerns the degree to which the trustee has empathy toward the trustor (McKnight et al., 2002). Recent research examines a variety of topics such as the impact of interface design on trust development in m-commerce (Liu, Marchewka, Lu, & Yu, 2005), factors affecting the adoption of m-commerce (Yang, 2005), and extended business applications for mobility (Schrott & Gluckler, 2004). Current Trends and Issues with Mobile Commerce The emerging mobile services and m-commerce services receive the growing attention about identifying new applications, designing frameworks, and facilitating network solutions (Varshney, 2005). The emergence of m-commerce has gained the attention of both practitioners and researchers due to its potential impact on business and industry (Chu & Pan, 2008). Advancements in wireless communications have increased the number of people using mobile devices, and have accelerated the growth of m-commerce (Chong et al., 2012). M-commerce technology is widely acknowledged as the next business format and its emergence has changed the business landscape at large (Faqih & Jaradat, 2015). Every company entering the mobile space leverages the mobile channel to create customer value (Kalakota & Robinson, 2001). With the rapid development of communication technologies, the various kinds of mobile applications are popular (Chen et al., 2011). However, m-commerce is still in its early stage (Zhang et al., 2012) and little is known about factors that influence consumers’ attitudes and value perceptions about them (Venkatesh & Brown, 2001). Numerous studies show that mobile services have failed to attract the hearts and minds of potential consumers (AlHinai, Kurnia, & Smith, 2010). With a wide popularity of mobile devices such as smartphones, laptops, net books, and tablet computers, as well as the increasingly powerful mobile technologies (e.g., the 3G and the Internet of Things), m-commerce has emerged as a new business phenomenon and has become a market with great potential (Zhang et al., 2012). Many m-commerce services including mobile auctions, multiparty games, mobile financial applications, mobile advertising, and mobile entertainment services will require group communications, where several users have to simultaneously interact for an outcome or the same information is sent to multiple users (Lee, Su, Hsu, Gerla, & Bagrodia, 2000). These group-oriented m-commerce services are likely to be transaction-oriented with the monetary value of some transactions (Varshney, 2008). Wei et al. (2009) stated that m-commerce provides a new business model with its characteristics such as mobility and reachability. Tiwari and Buse (2007) viewed m-commerce as m-business. The differences between m-commerce and m-business are that m-business does not limit itself to the transaction of monetary value via mobile devices. To gain an understanding of the mobile consumer, recent research examined a variety of topics, including value creation through service offerings to the consumer (Anckar & D’Incau, 2002), impact of m-commerce on business operations (Kumar & Zahn, 2003), contexts for mobile use, and the extended business applications for mobility (Schrott & Gluckler, 2004). Wei et al. (2009) indicated that cost can slow the development of m-commerce. Dai and Palvia (2008) studied the comparative perspective between Chinese and American m-commerce consumers and found that cost affects the Chinese consumers’ adoption decision, but does not affect the American consumers. Research efforts in m-commerce continue to gain the great strides over the last few years (Mahatanankoon, Wen, & Lim, 2005). The advent of location-based services enables m-commerce to be further leveraged so that the mobility aspect is taken advantage of rather than repackaging old applications in a new format (Rao & Minakakis, 2003). M-commerce extends the benefits of the website and allows for unique services and additional benefits when compared to the traditional e-commerce applications (Tsalgatidou & Pitoura, 2001). M-commerce offers the extra functionality to the existing e-commerce such as location and localization services (Junglas & Watson, 2008). E-commerce creates the value for customers in an effective manner that is different from that achieved in conventional business (Han & Han, 2001). CONCLUSION This chapter highlighted the overview of m-commerce; m-commerce and trust; and the current trends and issues with m-commerce. The operation of m-commerce is needed for modern organizations that seek to serve suppliers and customers, increase business performance, strengthen competitiveness, and achieve continuous success in global business. The benefits of m-commerce include the easy purchase process, instant updating of the information, improved clients' satisfaction, cost savings, new opportunities for business, and the ability for the consumers to use it everywhere. Therefore, it is required for modern organizations to investigate their m-commerce, develop a strategic plan to regularly check their practical advancements, and immediately respond to m-commerce needs of customers in modern organizations. Applying m-commerce has the potential to enhance organizational performance and reach strategic goals in global business. 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Mobile News Apps in India: Rethinking News in the Mobile Platform 

Presently, mobile news distribution involves various ways of delivery, from personalized news alerts thorough SMS or MMS to dedicated mobile news websites and mobile news aggregator applications or news apps. This chapter on the consumption of mobile news in developing country draws on the limited but growing scholarship on journalism and mobile media. News consumption can no longer be considered as an inconspicuous choice between legacy media and new media. On the contrary, individuals are dynamically assembling diverse news sources into multifarious arrangements of media use. Hence, at the moment, news audiences are increasingly demanding improved access and trying to navigate through the assortment of news messages circulated from print media, broadcasting, web, and mobile media platforms. India, becomes an emblematic instance in this process, as India’s mobile phone subscriber base peaked to more than 1 billion users in late 2015, making India the second largest mobile phone user base after China. Mobile subscriptions in India have surged in recent years, helped by the spread of inexpensive smartphones and very low call rates, as a result of a strong competition among mobile phone operators to expand customer base. In recent years, mobile media in India have also penetrated individuals’ news consumption and sharing behaviors. These emerging practices can be posited in relation to the ubiquitous presence of mobile devices and a steadily expanding digital ecosystem that have produced a set of conditions in which users rapidly acquire a set of behaviors connected to the medium, effectually incorporating mobile apps within the digital media ecosystem of news media consumption. Within this context, the objective of this article is to study mobile news media consumption practices in India. Utilizing both quantitative and qualitative methods, this chapter seeks to explore how mobile apps position themselves into wider news media assemblages in a developing country like India, and how these mobile news apps are linked to one another, in addition to the legacy news media in the wider field of using and managing news media in India. Hence, broadly, the article aims to understand why mobile apps are being used for news media consumption? In what way, mobile devices offer innovative ways of engaging with news in India? How these emerging practices are transforming not only the dominant ways of distributing the news but also the very nature of the relationship between news media and its audience. 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP




Mobile payment and spending

Despite evidence that payment modes can influence spending behaviors, researchers have yet to uncover the effct of mobile payment on spending. Evidently, payment modes serve as repositories or ‘stores of value’ and transactions involve ownership transfers of the ‘representative’ or ascribed values. We tested the effect of psychological ownership and awareness of spending in mobile payment on spending behavior. Results revealed that emotional attachments with payment modes are dependent on the value of sense of ownership and awareness of spending with payment modes. The study is situated in individualistic and collectivist culture and offers empirical support to explain mobile payment mode influence on spending, while providing practitioners and consumer researchers with new insight about mobile payment and consumer acceptance. Keywords: INTRODUCTION Conventionally, the decision to purchase goods or services should be independent of how the transaction is paid. However, there is considerable amount of evidence that payment mode impact on spending behavior (Hirschman 1979; Feinberg 1986; Prelec and Simester 2001). Thomas, Desai, and Seenivasan (2011) suggested that the payment mode not only affects how much is spent but also the type of purchase, for example cash reduces the overall spending on impulsive purchases and unhealthy food choices. The increased spending and payment mode link has been attributed to psychological pain when parting with cash and suggests that credit card decouple payment from purchase experience (Prelec and Loewenstein 1998; Raghubir and Srivastava 2008). Why parting with cash causes psychological pain and how decoupling operates to influence spending behaviour requires further explanation. Soman (2001) explained the spending effects of different payment mode by attributing them to memory processes rehearsal (cash is more memorable since parting with it causes psychological pain) and immediacy (wealth is depleted immediately). While few studies focus on factors that are specific to payment mode, for example payment transparency, Soman (2003) attributed spending difference is caused by payment transparency, that is, more transparent the payment mode, the stronger is the awareness of wealth depletion. Transparency of cash triggers the pain of payment, thus decreases spending. The objective of this study is to examine people’s perception of mobile payment on spending behaviour between New Zealand and France. METHODS Participants Three hundred and eighty-five participants from Christchurch, New Zealand and three hundrend from France took part in this study. A 19 items of PPM (perceptions of payment mode) scale was administered to collect perceptions of payment mode (see Khan et al. 2015). The data comprised participants’ responses to the PPM scale. The final data set, in addition to the payment mode use and the demographic information, comprised the following data taken from each receipt: total number of items, total value, number of items purchased in each of the product categories.

REFERENCES Baron, M. Reuben and David A. Kenny (1986) "The Moderator-Mediator Variable Distinction in Social Psychological Research – Conceptual, Strategic, and Statistical Considerations", Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51(6), 1173–1182. Belk, W. Russell, & Wallendorf, Melanie (1990) “The Sacred Meanings of Money,” Journal of Economic Psychology, 11, 35–67. Feinberg, Richard A. (1986) “Credit Cards as Spending Facilitating Stimuli: A Conditioning Interpretation,” Journal of Consumer Research, 13 (December), 348–56. Hirschman, Elizabeth C. (1979) “Differences in Consumer Purchase Behavior by Credit Card Payment System,” Journal of Consumer Research, 6 (June), 58–66. Khan, J., Belk, R. W., & Craig-Lees, M. (2015). Measuring consumer perceptions of payment mode. Journal of Economic Psychology, 47, 34-49. Preacher, J. KristopherDerek, D. Rucker and Andrew F. Hayes (2007) “Addressing Moderated Mediation Hypotheses: Theory, Methods, and Prescriptions,” Multivariate Behavioral Research, 42, 185-227. Prelec, Drazen and Duncan Simester (2001) “Always Leave Home without It: A Further Investigation of the Credit-Card Effect on Willingness to Pay,” Marketing Letters, 12 (1), 5–12. Prelec, Drazen and George Loewenstein (1998) “The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt,” Marketing Science, 17 (winter), 4–28. Raghubir, Priya and Joydeep Srivastava (2008) “Monopoly Money: The Effect of Payment Coupling and Form on Spending Behavior,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, 14 (3), 213–25. Soman, Dilip (2001) “Effects of Payment Mechanism on Spending Behavior: The Role of Rehearsal and Immediacy of Payments,” Journal of Consumer Research, 27 (March), 460–74 Soman, Dilip (2003) “The Effect of Payment Transparency on Consumption: Quasi- Experiments from the Field,” Marketing Letters, 14 (3), 5–12. Thomas, Manoj, Kalpesh Kaushik Desai, and Satheeshkumar Seenavasin (2011) “How Credit Card Payments Increase Unhealthy Food Purchases: Visceral Regulation of Vices,” Journal of Consumer Research, 38 (June), 126–39. Thaler, Richard (1980) “Towards a Positive Theory of Consumer Choice" Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 1, 39-60 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

 

Mobile social commerce 

S-commerce and M-commerce become buzz word recent years. The social and mobile elements have brought new ways of thinking as well as challenging opportunities in e-commerce. In this chapter, we firstly introduce the concepts of on-line social commerce, its classifications and social shopping behaviours. Secondly, we analyse the evolution from on-line social commerce to mobile social commerce. Different case studies are given to demonstrate the concept of mobile social commerce, to precisely define how mobile and social feathers add value to traditional e-commerce. The objective of this chapter is to present an overview of e-commerce with the changing trend of social media and mobility. Towards this new trend, several questions are raised. - What is social commerce? What is the classification of social commerce? - How social shopping behaviours affect on e-commerce? - What is the evolution from traditional e-commerce to on-line social commerce? - How mobile features affect on social commerce? In this chapter, we will focus first on the recent evolution from e-commerce to one line social commerce. Then we will present mobile specificities for social commerce before analysing different existing social mobile commerce applications. We conclude this chapter with some prospective on mobile social commerce. A proposal of the outline of this chapter is as follows: 1. Background 2. From e-commerce to online social commerce 2.1 Social commerce different models 2.2 Social shopping behavior 3. From online social commerce to mobile social commerce 4. Application studies of mobile social commerce 5. Future research directions 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Mobile social network marketing 

Social networking has transformed marketing activities and imposed a new paradigm based on earned communication, real-time customer relationship management, open innovation, and peer-to-peer social influence on consumer behaviours. In this chapter, we first present this new marketing paradigm created by social networks, and then we analyse the evolution from social network marketing to mobile social network marketing. Finally, we illustrate this new mobile marketing using different case studies of mobile social networking. Our objective is to provide marketers with practical information on this fast-growing trend. 1. We define mobile social networks based on current literature. We then classify today’s social networks and mobile social networks on two dimensions, potentially allowing a differentiated marketing approach for each to be developed. 2. We describe social and mobile features in detail, and we propose a social network framework that could be used to identify social features from both informational and user-involvement perspectives. 3. We illustrate the marketing evolution from four perspectives (communication, customer relationship management, market research, and marketing innovation) and two phases (from traditional marketing to social network marketing, and from web-based to mobile-based social network marketing). Here is our proposed outline of this chapter: 1. Background 2. From traditional marketing to online social network marketing 2.1 Classification of social networks 2.2 Social features 2.3 From traditional marketing to online social network marketing 3. From online social network marketing to mobile social network marketing 3.1 Mobile social networks 3.2 Mobile features 3.3 Mobile marketing efficiency 3.4 From online social network marketing to mobile social network marketing 4. Application case studies of mobile social network marketing 5. Future research directions 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Online irritation factors: websites and Social Network 


INTRODUCTION Several years ago, Internet became the new media such as TV, radio, newspapers and cinema. In 2004, a new phenomena is born: Facebook. In fact, Facebook is the second website in the world in terms of visits and the first one in terms of number of accounts with over 1.59 billion monthly active Facebook user (2016). Many researchers were interested in studying the influence of environment on internet user’s behavior, but they only focused their research on its positive side (Jacob, 2005). It’s important to consider the dark side of the experience because negative information has a bigger role in judgment formation than positive information and that’s due to a superior cognitive treatment (Mizerski, 1982). This study is about exploring irritation sources felt by users on websites and Facebook and their reactions. It aims to help the deciders to, understand user behavior and decrease irritation sources on their website and Facebook. SCOPE OF RESEARCH Researchers began to model the influence of the environment on consumer behavior (Kotler, 1973; Mehrabian and Russell, 1974). Kotler (1973) emphasizes the importance of the environment by explaining that it is a management tool like the price, range or advertising. A few years later, Daucé and Rieunier (2002) argue that the management of the store’s atmosphere has become "a key element in the strategy of many retailers." To better understand the role of the atmosphere on consumer behavior, researchers are interested in the variables that make up that environment and by proposing different classifications (Turley and Milliman, 2000). Kotler (1973) was the first to propose a typology of environmental factors. There are four categories, tactile, audible, olfactory and visual factors. Several researchers (Eroglu et al, 2001; Childers et al, 2001; Chang et al, 2002) have shown interest into Internet atmosphere and developed taxonomies for its elements. According to Shaver et al (1987), the "irritation is a feeling derived from the anger family but more moderate than it". D’Astous (2000) defines irritation as "elements of the shopping environment that create negative feelings among customers". According to d’Astous (2000), asking individuals only about the positive effects of the shopping experience and forget the negative effects, can introduce a "positivity bias". METHODOLOGY Given the exploratory nature of this research, a qualitative study seems appropriate. Thus, semi-structured individual interviews, lasting between 30 and 45 minutes, were conducted with 40 people. These interviews were completed by the critical incident method involves asking the interviewee to talk about a situation already experienced. After the face-to-face interview, online survey was conducted using electronic mail and Facebook. The sample is characterized by a diversity in terms of their professional situations, family and their ages (between 15 and 35 years). The study concerns both websites and Facebook. RESULTS Thematic analysis performed for the sources of irritation experienced by users during their navigation on websites has helped identify six major themes that have been classified according to the typology of Childers et al (2001), hedonic and utilitarian elements. In this research, the utilitarian elements are advertising, informational content and website navigability. Results demonstrate that 18/40 of the interviewees were irritated by advertising elements such as ad banners, pop-ups, spams and video spots. 12/40 were irritated by informational content and precisely by the lack of information, its reliability, limited access, etc. Finally 8/40 of the interviewees were irritated by the website navigability and specifically the loading time. In the other hand, hedonic factors represent the website design, sound and functionalities. 21/40 of the informants complained about website design elements like colors, architecture, menu complexity, website sophistication, ease of use and user experience. 14 were irritated by sound factors essentially by the music. Finally, only 4 interviewees were irritated by the website functionalities. The interviewees reaction toward these irritating factors vary depending on the importance of the website or the irritation degree and they tend to leave the website, to continue navigating, to leave and return another time or to ask for help. Content analysis revealed four thematic units. These four themes were then grouped into two categories, "social factors" and "factors related to the use of Facebook". When asked about social factors, respondents emphasized interaction within groups and pages in the first place and relationships with their friends and people they do not know in the second place. Interviewees cited as irritating sources violence and manipulation in groups and pages and invitations and behaviors of their friends in Facebook. In the other hand, respondents mentioned two sources of irritation which are related to the use of Facebook, informational content and updates. All the interviewees complained about the misinformation and rumors, 16/40 complained about confidentiality issues and 24/40 about recurrent updates. Reactions to irritating factors on Facebook were many and depended on the source of irritation. Facing the manipulation and violence within groups, respondents adopt two types of reactions, to unsubscribe and report group or to only unsubscribe. Facing irritating behaviors of their friends and unwanted invitations, respondents distinguished four types of reactions, removing the person who has an unpleasant behavior, hiding the news about the person, blocking unwanted invitations or disabling Facebook. Facing constant updates, two types of behavior emerged through interviews, constant verification of Privacy and Security Settings or adapting to updates. Finally, facing multiple rumors and information, respondents have become very distrustful toward the information they find on Facebook. For this reason, they adopt two different types of behaviors, checking all the information before sharing it or no longer look after information on Facebook. CONCLUSION This study identified the various irritating factors and the reactions they cause to the Internet user. But like any research, it takes a number of limitations that will allow suggesting some future directions of research. In fact, some of the limits were the lack of literature on sources of irritation and the fact that interviews were conducted only on people between 15 and 35 years. Researchers can complete this work by checking if the sources of irritation are the same for the over 35 years and developing a measurement scale that would quantify the negative emotions experienced by the consumer on the internet. 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

Privacy and security issues on mobile applications 

Development of smart phones and other smart devices has lead to the development of mobile applications, which are in use frequently by the users of smart devices. It is also anticipated that the number of mobile applications will grow rapidly in the next years. This topic has therefor been highly researched for the past years. Mobile applications gather data on users and that is why privacy and security in mobile applications is a very important research topic. In this paper a literature review on this topic will be done. Keywords: privacy, security, mobile phones, mobile applications, literature review INTRODUCTION The aim of this chapter is to research the privacy and security issues of mobile applications. There were over 100 billion mobile applications downloaded in 2015 (Statista 2016). Mobile applications are in use in many areas in people’s lifes as well as for corporate intentions. The flow of data in mobile applications is enormeous and there are numerous possibilities of the analysis of collected data. People use mobile applications for entertainment, as a social utility, for communication, because of social influence and because of performance and effort expectancy (Kang 2014). They also use it when they perceive usefulness, satisfaction and get used to it as a habit (Hsiao, Chang, and Tang 2016). The application developers are the ones, who should be addressing the issue of privacy and security announcements and settings for each application and each mobile device can send their location, sound, camera footage to application developers, sometimes without users’ consent or users’ acknowledgement of it (Shilton 2009). Researchers are exposing privacy and security threats of mobile applications (Khan, Abbas, and Al-Muhtadi 2015). Insecure mobile application can cause security and privacy issues on users and organizations (Jain and Shanbhag 2012). Another study has found that people disclose their information in mobile applications without considering the risk perception, if they trust the application (Morosan and DeFranco 2015). It is important that data anonymity, confidentiality, integrity and authentication is provided for users of mobile applications and in the area of privacy, data protection and confidentiality of personal information need to be asured. We will conduct a literature review of privacy and security issues on mobile applications and in this way provide a state-of-the art research in this topic. We will propose the following research questions for the research: RQ1: Which mobile applications categories are researched most often? Most scientific papers focus their studies on one type of mobile applications, which is mostly connected with its purpose. This can be either entertainment, business, communication etc. (Puttaswamy and Zhao 2010, Morosan and DeFranco 2015, Lupton and Jutel 2015, Christin, Roßkopf, and Hollick 2013). We will devide all papers, selected for the literature review into different categories of mobile applications. RQ2: Which types of measurement of privacy and security of mobile applications are used in research? Research papers measure privacy and security of mobile applications differently. A research will be done to see, if different factors are measured and constructed in models. Normally, these factors determine how users perceive privacy and security in mobile applications. RQ3: Which factors are involved in privacy and security of mobile applications? An analysis of factors, involved in privacy and security of mobile applications will be conducted. All important factors will be analysed and identified. The significance of factors will also be analysed. RQ4: Are there any differences in factors, limited to specific categories of mobile applications? In this research question, an analysis of the factors, which are specific to some categories of mobile applications will be done. We will limit the search to the most important references. In the literature review, the online databases will be used: - ScienceDirect http://www.sciencedirect.com - Springerlink http://link.springer.com - Web of Science https://apps.webofknowledge.com - IEEExplore http://ieeexplore.ieee.org - ACM Digital Library http://dl.acm.org - Scopus http://www.scopus.com - Emerald Insight http://www.emeraldinsight.com In this chapter, an overview of privacy and security in mobile applications will be done. This is a highly researched topic in the past years and enough papers will be available to conduct such a review. As far as to our knowledge, such research has not been done yet.

REFERENCES Christin, Delphine, Christian Roßkopf, and Matthias Hollick. 2013. uSafe: A privacy-aware and participative mobile application for citizen safety in urban environments. Pervasive and Mobile Computing 9 (5):695-707. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pmcj.2012.08.005. Hsiao, Chun-Hua, Jung-Jung Chang, and Kai-Yu Tang. 2016. Exploring the influential factors in continuance usage of mobile social Apps: Satisfaction, habit, and customer value perspectives. Telematics and Informatics 33 (2):342-355. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tele.2015.08.014. Jain, A. K., and D. Shanbhag. 2012. Addressing Security and Privacy Risks in Mobile Applications. IT Professional 14 (5):28-33. doi: 10.1109/MITP.2012.72. Kang, Seok. 2014. Factors influencing intention of mobile application use. Int. J. Mob. Commun. 12 (4):360-379. doi: 10.1504/ijmc.2014.063653. Khan, Jalaluddin, Haider Abbas, and Jalal Al-Muhtadi. 2015. Survey on Mobile User's Data Privacy Threats and Defense Mechanisms. Procedia Computer Science 56:376-383. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2015.07.223. Lupton, Deborah, and Annemarie Jutel. 2015. It's like having a physician in your pocket! A critical analysis of self-diagnosis smartphone apps. Social Science & Medicine 133:128-135. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.04.004. Morosan, Cristian, and Agnes DeFranco. 2015. Disclosing personal information via hotel apps: A privacy calculus perspective. International Journal of Hospitality Management 47:120-130. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2015.03.008. Puttaswamy, Krishna P. N., and Ben Y. Zhao. 2010. Preserving privacy in location-based mobile social applications. Proceedings of the Eleventh Workshop on Mobile Computing Systems, Applications, Annapolis, Maryland. Shilton, Katie. 2009. Four billion little brothers?: privacy, mobile phones, and ubiquitous data collection. Commun. ACM 52 (11):48-53. doi: 10.1145/1592761.1592778. Statista. 2016. Number of mobile app downloads worldwide from 2009 to 2017 (in millions) . Statista Accessed 26 February. http://www.statista.com/statistics/266488/forecast-of-mobile-app-downloads/.

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Proposed Platform for Social Media Commerce 

Social media commerce has changed the way of commerce globally; customers are affected more and more by social media, in decision making for buying a products or a service. While in the past people were affected by traditional marketing ways like newspapers, televisions and radios for buying a product, nowadays, through social media customers can find feedbacks and reviews on social media and can see thousands of photos of a single product with less a minute of searching in a social networking sites like. With the growth of social media’s impact on businesses, social commerce has become a trending way of making commerce. In this paper it demonstrated a platform for businesses to make commerce through facebook which is called facebook commerce 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP




The future of mobile learning 


This chapter will focus on general, accepted trends in mobile learning. The research included in the chapter will show how mobile learning is not just about channels of learning, but also about redefining how learning takes place. Of interest to the reader will be the split between trends in the developed economies and those in the developing economies of the world. Both have very unique characteristics and must be treated as such. The chapter will be a fine balance of current views out of the latest research, as well as projections based on both technological and socio-economic variables. The chapter will be divided into sub-sections, of which six are outlined below. 1. INTRODUCTION • The rise of mobile learning • Views on how people learn have changed in the twenty-first century • Impact of mobile technology on: - Access to learning - The cost of education (implicit and explicit) - Learning options and choice - Power and decentralization • Illustrations of innovation, institutions and companies that have been leaders in the realm of mobile learning. These illustrations will include (among others): - MOOCS - High touch online learning - Mobile Startups - Support for home schooling 2. A SUSTAINABLE FRAMEWORK FOR MOBILE LEARNING DESIGN • Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge (TPACK) is the central point at which all of the core knowledge areas related to teaching with technology interact and affect each other. • Importantly, content, pedagogy and technology cannot be considered as isolated knowledge areas. • Any changes in a particular area will necessarily impact the others. • The most effective and meaningful teaching with technology emerges from a deep understanding and application of TPACK. • As a general rule, educators that are proficient in TPACK are able to: - Represent theories and concepts using suitable technologies; - Tailor their pedagogical practices to teach specific content in innovative ways; - Identify why certain content is difficult to learn and how appropriate technology can be employed to enhance learners’ understanding, and - Determine the extent to which technology can be used to further prior learning and construct new knowledge. • While this is defined in relation to teaching specifically, there is immense value in extracting from this how changes in technology necessitate an adapted approach to designing user experiences. • Technology is, and will continue to be, a driver of disruptive innovation not only in education, but in numerous fields. • New technologies demand new approaches, as new approaches create a fertile breeding ground for new technologies. • To truly leverage the power of technology, it’s essential to understand not only the changes in user behavior driven by mobile technologies, but how to design mobile experiences based on the capabilities of the technology and users’ needs. SAMR model: Enhancement Substitution: Function remains the same, but technology is used to automate certain elements Augmentation: Function is improved through the use of technology Transformation Modification: Function is redesigned through the use of technology Redefinition: Functions that were previously not possible are enabled through the use of technology • This thinking model can be applied to the use of technology in a multitude of contexts beyond education. • Mobile technology in particular allows functions to be reimagined and redefined. • Whatever the capabilities of future technologies, the SAMR model can provide a framework for organisations and individuals to consider their potential impact. 3. MOBILE LEARNING IN THE DEVELOPED ECONOMY • In the developed economy specifically, mobile platforms have become crucial components of an enriched learning experience. • The use of websites, social media and specialized apps tailored to meet specific needs has grown significantly. • This growth is seen when understanding developments in: - Online repositories - Virtual learning environments - Learning management systems (LMS) - The use of social media (student-student and teacher-student) - Webinars for distance information sharing in real time - Live tutorials/sessions (virtual classrooms) for dispersed interaction in real time - Video lectures - Plagiarism checking (TurnItIn, Vericite) - Interactive technology (e.g. Kahoot!) 4. MOBILE LEARNING IN THE DEVELOPING ECONOMY • For the developing economy, the role and model of mobile learning differs significantly. • A core characteristic of emerging markets is that technological development is non-linear. • Non-linear development is particularly relevant to the role of mobile learning • This is illustrated in the role of: - Devices (typically lower smartphone penetration, many users still using feature phones; limited use of tablets and other smart devices such as smart watches; this limits access to certain features, functions and apps) - Data (higher data costs and limited availability and speed impact accessibility) - Distribution/deployment (not a one-to-one model; shared devices – e.g. one per family/classroom/office) • There are also differences between adaptive and responsive design. • Responsive design and native apps aren’t always the most feasible options in developing countries where users may be using feature phones rather than smartphones. • However, the penetration of smartphone usage is increasing dramatically as prices are forced down by low-cost entries into the market. 5. FUTURE TRENDS • Conclusion about future trends (both megatrends, and the next ten years) - Virtual Reality - Gamification - Sympathetic pricing 6. CASE STUDY: MOBILE LEARNING IN SOUTH AFRICA • South Africa is a strong case study in which to use as a predictor of future trends in mobile education. • South Africa is a hybrid economy, which in essence means that it has a very developed formal sector as well as a huge informal sector. • Define South Africa’s economy - Population dynamics - Formal sector dominance vs. informal sector strength - Mobile growth • Growth of online learning - Examples of new modes and success stories in both the high-income and low-income - Convergence of access and opportunity 

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

Virtualization in Mobile Cloud Computing (VMCC) Environments


Mobile devices have recently become so pervasive that they are increasingly replacing personal computers in everyday activities. However, due to their limited resources, mobile devices cannot or the same performance of personal computers and workstations. One option to overcome such limitations is given by remote desktop access, wherein the mobile device uses thin client software to connect to a remote desktop host. When such host is virtualized, remote desktop access becomes a form of mobile cloud networking. Unfortunately, most of the widely used protocols for remote desktop access on mobile devices have been designed for scenarios involving personal computers. Furthermore, their energy consumption at the mobile device has not been fully characterized. In this chapter, we specially address energy consumption of mobile cloud networking realized through remote desktop technologies. In order to produce repeatable experiments with comparable results, we design a methodology to automate experiments with a mobile device. Furthermore, we develop an application that allows recording touch events and replaying them for a certain number of times. Moreover, we analyze the performance of widely used remote desktop protocols through extensive experiments involving different classes of mobile devices and realistic usage scenarios. We also relate the energy consumption to the different components involved and to the protocol features. Finally, we provide some considerations on aspects related to usability and user experience. Keywords: Mobile devices, experimental evaluation, energy consumption, mobile cloud networking, virtual network computing, remote desktop protocol.


Additional Information

Introduction Mobile devices, ranging from smart phones to tablets, have recently become so pervasive that they are increasingly replacing personal computers in everyday activities related to both entertainment and work. However, due to their limited resources, mobile devices cannot or the same performance of personal computers and workstations. To this regard, one of the prominent approaches to overcome such limitations consists in adding computational and storage resources to the cloud. With adding, the mobile device runs only a thin layer of software which interfaces with application-specific services in the cloud. For instance, software for picture organization and categorization can exploit powerful and accurate face recognition algorithms running on the cloud without the need of any computation at the mobile device. However, such an approach requires that source data are available to the remote service. This may require transferring data from the mobile device to the cloud, which incurs in both communication and energy consumption overheads. A different option is given by remote desktop access. In this case, the mobile device uses thin client software which connects to a remote desktop server providing an operating system and its applications. The thin client shows the desktop user interface and handles the related interactions. Specially, input events captured by the client are transferred to the server and the display of the mobile device is updated according to the received response, in order to match the content of the desktop screen. To a certain extent, remote desktop access can be seen as an extreme case of mobile cloud computing, wherein the mobile device only acts as remote display and input device, while all the rest is demanded to the remote system. When the remote server is virtualized, this access scheme corresponds to a special case of mobile cloud networking. While research targeted to mobile cloud computing has considered resource utilization as the primary design objective, most of the commonly used solutions for remote desktop access were originally designed for personal computers. As a consequence, the reference scenario was represented by systems which have enough resources, are static and access the Internet through a wired connection. Even though there are some solutions specially designed for mobile devices, they are usually not publicly available, or they cannot be easily integrated in the existing infrastructure. As a consequence, the vast majority of remote desktop protocols available for mobile devices are still those designed for personal computers. In this chapter, we aim at characterizing the energy consumption of mobile cloud computing realized through remote desktop technologies. Our goal is to analyze the performance of widely used remote desktop protocols through experiments involving different classes of mobile devices and realistic usage scenarios. Consequently, we have to ensure the reliability and consistency of all experiments. Finally, we also seek to relate the energy consumption to the different components involved and to the protocol features. Structure of Chapter 1. Concept of Cloud Computing 1.1 Basic of Cloud Computing 1.2 Charters tics of Cloud Computing 1.3 Application of Cloud Computing 1.4 Security Issue in Cloud Computing 2. Mobile Cloud Computing 2.1 Basic of Mobile Cloud Computing 2.2 Charters tics of Mobile Cloud Computing 2.3 Structure of Mobile Computing Environment 2.4 Application of Mobile Cloud Computing 2.5 Security Issue in Mobile Cloud Computing 3. Remote Desktop Protocols for Mobile Cloud 3.1 Virtual Network Computing 3.2 Energy Profiling for Mobile Device 3.3 Cloud Based Solutions 3.4 Mobile Friendly Remote Access Solutions 4. Experimentation in VMCC 4.1 Experimental Setup 4.2 Automation of Experiments 4.3 VMCC with Smart Phones 4.4. VMCC with Tablets 5. Future Research Directions 6. References 7. Further Readings

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

16 - Designing website interfaces for m-commerce by thinking to the elderly population: a France vs Tunisia comparison

The adoption of mobile commerce (m-commerce) is increasing the world over and varies between countries. The m-commerce that now accounts for 1.6% of the whole retail segment, is expected to reach the share of 2.7% by 2019. For example, in France the m-commerce accounts for 22% of all online transactions (37% smartphones and 63% tablets; Criteo, 2015). Furthermore, older users are an important consumer sector with real growth potential (Piqueras-Fiszman et al., 2010). An important factor to be considered is the quality of the navigation experience in relation to the progressive aging of the population using Internet, especially when they browse websites on mobile devices. Eyesight decreases after 45 years (Mutti & Zadnik, 2000). Hence, understanding age-related differences in website navigation through mobile devices is a key issue for designers (Bergstrom et al., 2013). Our research aims to investigate the effects of mobile website design on the behavioral intentions of people older than 45 years. More specifically, we analyze the interaction effects between the principal design cues of website such as background/foreground colors, font text and layout. We have created a website selling music CDs, especially designed for the experiment in order to put participants in real conditions of navigation. Three experiments were conducted. Experiment 1 manipulate the levels of color contrast, negative contrast (light text on a dark background) versus positive contrast (dark text on light background). In experiment 2, contrast and font were manipulated in a plan of experience 2 (negative vs positive contrast) x 2 (Serif font vs sans Serif font). Finally, contrast and layout were manipulated with a factorial plan 2 (negative vs positive contrast) x 2 (dense vs an airy layout). This research involved 439 participants from Tunisia and France in order to improve his external validity. The results show significant effects of mobile website design on purchase and revisit intentions. Similar and different results regarding the interaction effects of design elements were found between France and Tunisia.

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

17 - Are we ready to App? A Study on mHealth Apps, Future and Trends in Malaysia Context

The global storming production with adoption of smart phones has enormously increased the demand for mobile applications. Mobile devices have become ubiquitous, being the simplest yet favourite tool for entertainment and life valued applications. The adoption of mobile devices is occurring at an extremely rapid rate in most countries and more so in developing countries (Marshall, Lewis & Whittaker 2012; Curioso & Mechael, 2010). In healthcare system, the main usage of mobile technologies for individual user is named mHealth. mHealth has been widely defined by various researchers and organizations for example, Akter et al (2013) defines mHealth as a new paradigm of the emerging IT artefact, the app of mobile communication such as mobile phone and PDA to deliver right time health services to customers/ patients. A coarse calculation states that total app download count has approached 17.7 billion across the globe for the year 2014. Similarly in 2015, roughly estimating around 500 million people used health applications over smart phones (García-Gómez et al.2014) and the latest info by Power et al. (2016) stated that there are approximately 165 000 mHealth apps in the market. Although a large volume of literature is available on mHealth, the topic is yet under development and may provide various opportunities for further research and applications. As most current research is conducted mostly to evaluate the characteristic of the apps and very minimal to none were conducted from the context of Malaysia perspective. The chapter propose to present a comprehensive review on mHealth app in Malaysia. The main contribution of these chapters are as the following: • To provide an extensive review of mHealth in Malaysia • To analyse the top mHealth apps in mobile markets (two platform iOS and Android platform) o To rank pricing of mHealth app in Malaysia Ringgit o To categorized top mHealth apps in Malaysia according to their functionality • To discuss challenges and future of mHealth apps adoption in Malaysian This chapter will be divided into four parts. The first part of this chapter will provide an extensive review of mHealth in Malaysia. A review of Malaysia network infrastructure will also be provided to provide insight on smartphone technology history. Government and private intensive steps in promoting mHealth apps will also be discussed in the first part. For info, the percentage of individuals in Malaysia using computer was 56.0 per cent, using internet was 57.0 per cent and having mobile phone was 94.2 per cent in year 2013 and the numbers are keep increasing daily. Among all Internet users, 60.3 per cent were using at least once a day, 71.2 per cent of individuals were using Internet at home, 55.3% were using via mobile phone and 37.8% were using Internet at work place. (SKMM, 2014). The second part will present the evaluation of Top 100 m-health applications to gain a deeper understanding of the critical content of features. Our emphasis will be on Top 100 mHealth app from two major platform iOS (iTunes Store) and Android (Play Store). Only two categories from this two platform (Medical and Health&Fitness) will be evaluated. Some exclusion criteria’s will be applied where by the apps selected will be restricted to English and Bahasa Malaysia languages. Only apps that fulfils the objective and aim for proliferation on consumer healthcare will be chosen, All insurance organization, games, business catalogue, entertainment navigation, shops, conferences, company ads, web apps, magazine will be excluded. For each apps that were chosen, information on developer name, star ranking, method of payment, pricing info, personal info that were captured will be evaluated. Beside the evaluation of the top 100 apps, the following part in the chapter will round up some current challenges faced by in Malaysia. It’ll include a review on telecommunications pricing factor, adoption level, awareness level and trust towards mobile payments. At the same time, initiatives, and action plans taken by government and private organizations will also be highlighted here. The chapter concludes with a summary on the overall content and will provide a roadmap for future directions. This chapter is hoping to provide a basic overview on top of healthcare mobile apps in Malaysia. Overall this proposes chapter will be significant to researchers who want to have a basic review on mHealth apps in Malaysia and what are the challenges faced by the country that consist of 30 572 466 numbers of people. This chapter will contribute to the body of knowledge in mHealth area and also provide insight for the government and mHealth developers as well. Government may provide some actions or guideline for the future of this trending ways of having a good care of an individual’s life. For mHealth app developers, perhaps the differences un app features and pricing can be one of the main input to draw up their business plan in the future. Keywords : mHealth, mobile application, mobile healthcare apps, Malaysia

References

Akter, S., D’Ambra, J., & Ray, P. (2013). Development and validation of an instrument to measure user perceived service quality of mHealth.Information & Management, 50(4), 181-195. Curioso, W. H., & Mechael, P. N. (2010). Enhancing ‘M-health’with south-to-south collaborations. Health Affairs, 29(2), 264-267 García-Gómez, J. M., de la Torre-Díez, I., Vicente, J., Robles, M., López-Coronado, M., & Rodrigues, J. J. (2014). Analysis of mobile health applications for a broad spectrum of consumers: A user experience approach. Health informatics journal, 20(1), 74-84. Marshall, C., Lewis, D., & Whittaker, M. (2013). mHealth technologies in developing countries: a feasibility assessment and a proposed framework. Powell, A. C., Torous, J., Chan, S., Raynor, G. S., Shwarts, E., Shanahan, M., & Landman, A. B. (2016). Interrater Reliability of mHealth App Rating Measures: Analysis of Top Depression and Smoking Cessation Apps. JMIR mHealth and uHealth, 4(1). Statistical Brief Number Fourteen - Malaysian Handphone Users Survey (2013). Retrieved November 1 , 2014, from www.skmm.gov.my/skmmgovmy/media/.../pdf/130717_HPUS2012.pdf

Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

18 - Perception on the Use of Social Network Tool for Education Learning

This study presents how college Students’ perception on the use of social network tool for education learning in USA. This study is a survey research design. The survey research design is a very valuable tool for assessing opinions and trends and it include graduate and undergraduate student male and female. The data collection was via UNC website. Composite 2 of the survey was eliminated because the responses orders of the items were different from composite 1 as the responses in composite 1 went from strongly disagree to strongly agree while in composite 2 the responses went the other direction and we were afraid the participants did not pay attention to that. Keywords: Social Network; Educational Learning; Experience and Engagement Introduction College Students’ Perception on the Use of Social Network Tool for Education Learning Proliferation of Internet has revolutionized virtually all aspects of human life. One of the primary benefits of Internet is the ability to provide different platforms in which information exchange takes place. Social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, among others provides supportive learning environments if well utilized. However, the success of social networks as a pedagogical tool primarily depends on the users perception. With the rapid increase in the number of Social Media users in tools such as Facebook, Twitter, I think there is a need to integrate the Social Media in all the fields of education: higher education/ general education. It is a convenient aid to stimulate students to brainstorm and connect students to the real-world issues. Moreover, it is a good opportunity for students and teachers to be connected and exchange information all the time. Social media plays a big role in our society especially in the education field. Social media can help both teachers and students communicate, collaborate, and teach. There are a lot of challenges that are solved through social media in education. Students can be very motivated to learn through E-learning. For example through Facebook teachers can communicate with other faculty members. Also vocational learning can be done through mobile phones, and other digital devices (Brooks, 2009). Background Overall, these studies highlight the need for social media in the learning process. The evidence presented in this section indicates that the social media has a great impact on education. Through E-learning students have an easier chance accessing and succeeding school. Teachers and other school faculty can use social media sites such as Facebook to communicate. Internet can also be used for many different ways to help the process of education. Some people may have the wrong idea about social media, but if it is used the right way it doe more good than bad and benefits who ever used it the right way. The rationale for using undergraduate and graduate level students is because they are the most active group on the use of social media. Whereas use of social media seems fairly divided across both genders, the research will aim at finding any interesting outcomes in regard to gender. The perception on use of social media has a large dependence on the gender of users. The fact that the study will be carried out in a college setting sets the age bracket to 18-50 years. The study will also put into consideration the ethnic diversity across the college. While collecting study sample, care will be taken to consider different ethnic groups. It is expected that perception will show some variation based on gender. Considering the students level have already adapted to college life, this level will be the most appropriate for the study. This study will use survey research to collect information about the use of social media for learning by college students. Methodology This study is a survey research design. Participants According to G-power software version 3.1, the recommended sample size was 64 in each group, however the total sample size in this current study was 58. Data Analysis A quantitative research method has been selected for this study to collect the data for better understanding of whom will use more of the social network between grade and undergrad. Group Statistics University Status N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean Mean_exp Undergraduate 23 4.2253 .37869 .07896 Graduate 35 3.4338 1.06841 .18060 References (sample) Beltran, M., & Belle, S. (2013, December). The use of internet-based social media as a tool in enhancing student’s learning experiences in biological sciences. Higher Learning Research Communications, 3(4). Buzzetto-More, N. A. (2014). An examination of undergraduate student’s perceptions and predilections of the use of youtube in the teaching and learning process. Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, 10, 17-32. 



Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

19 - Inbound Marketing toward a conceptual definition 


The consumer operates in a digitized environment which impacted its attitude toward products/services on the market. Faced with overload information and advertising saturation , he becomes fickle, demanding and stressful. Aware of this and in order to improve retention rates, companies have moved to a more individualized targeting than mass marketing, to be in a relational and collaborative approach. The information technologies have contributed to the development of this approach, in the collection and processing of a considerable volume of data about customers, their profiles and their behavior on the web, transactions, purchase history, click rates , time spent on the site, downloaded elements. The strategic logic of this approach is to deliberately attract customers to the company. It's Inbound Marketing. This strategy is deployed in the professional world and businesses are "switched" in Media to convert its users into potential customers. The research asserts that marketing has undergone significant changes following this trend (Laugier, 2012; and Removille Dedieu, 2012) and were interested in digital marketing and relationship marketing. Although this practice is growing, the only writings considered as theoretical reference to the Inbound Marketing are those of Vargo and Lush (2009) and Halligan and Shah (2011). Given the relevance of this concept and our knowledge, there is no commonly accepted definition in the scientific community, we intend to perform as part of this research. We use Delphi to develop a consensus definition of the concept of Inbound Marketing. This methodological approach aims to collect opinions of professionals and academics on the subject. A qualitative study of this target will highlight a convergence of opinion on the subject. This method is going well in this study in terms of its relevance, particularly in terms of inaccuracy over a definition. The contribution of this investigation will be in the formulation of a definition of this concept. 



Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

20 - Mobile Augmented Reality: Evolving human-computer interaction 


Manufacturing of mobile devices with high computing capabilities, communication modules, high-resolution cameras, and several integrated sensors, has changed the way of communication between individuals. They have made it possible to develop applications, which allow users to access Internet for searching information, making purchases, performing banking transactions, sharing photos or just chat. All this growing market of devices and applications provides to Augmented Reality an open field to generate a better user-interaction experience. The ability to interact with virtual information over the real world extends our capabilities of perception and increases our skills to perform complex tasks. We could gather extra information about places, visualize instructions to complete tasks on line without the need to search in documents, identify objects through the camera, develop amazing games which allow the interaction with real entities, among others tasks. All these activities can be performed more easily than before, now, we need to direct our efforts toward development of more attractive and useful applications for users, to increase their knowledge, entertainment, and communication. Augmented Reality (AR) is an extension of reality through addition of virtual information that complements the reality perceived by the user; 3D virtual objects, textual information, sounds, odors, holograms, and any other artifact with which the user can be in contact can compose this extension. The difference between AR and virtual reality is that the user can interact with both, real and virtual objects at the same time. With AR, user has the possibility to gather more information about the real environment; for example, a user who is visiting a historic building can obtain data about the events occurred there, or the architectural style through the camera of its cellphone. A mobile augmented world can be generated through cellphones, smart glasses, video displays, smart watches, wearing projection devices, and any other device with capabilities to process or display information that could be carried easily by the user. Information could be stored in the device or access it through Internet. Social networks are useful to share information and generate a more interactive world. Adding artificial intelligence into the application allows remember or identify user preferences, and show relevant information although the user not requests it. This chapter was writing with the intention to show recent advances in technology required to generate a mobile AR application; also, to illustrate how these applications are currently spreading in many fields. These applications are present in automotive industry, manufacturing, logistics, entertainment, medicine, commerce, and education, to mention those with more use. Although there are significant advances, the constant improving of devices opens new possibilities of interaction. There are challenges, which need to be addressed, and guidelines, for developing better applications, to be defined. Automotive industry. New generations of cars are integrated with sensors and displays that increase the comfort of drivers. They are composed by GPS systems, which establish routes to follow for reaching a destination, cameras to view different angles without losing the focus on the road, cellphone integration with devices embedded in the car, and wireless technology for communication. With all this technology working together, AR applications have a wide market to exploit; not only applications that can be developed by manufacturer, but those that can be acquired by users through applications markets. An important aspect, to be considered in applications over a car, is security, both as on driving as on sharing information. Manufacturing. Workers, involved in the manufacturing process, need to follow defined instructions to perform his job; they require experience to perform it in an accurate and speedy manner. New workers, integrated to the manufacturing process, need to be trained for acquiring those skills. With mobile AR, the worker can access instructions on real time through smart glasses reducing the risk of making manufacturing mistakes. Another advantage is the reduction of training by providing a more general knowledge. Communication through interfaces makes it possible to obtain a global view of the manufacturing process, generated from the view of every worker in the production line, allowing managers to take better decisions. Logistics. Companies, involved in the business of transporting goods, have to organize packages to be sent from one point to another. The number of process involved during delivery of packages depends on every company; however, all this processes require a good planning for reduce costs and time. Some companies have started to use drones for transportation, other ones have started to work in projects with AR. These applications can be applied to warehousing operations, transportation optimization, final delivery, and to offer value-added services. Entertainment. Video game industry has been a great business. Many users love to play realistic games with great stories. This has led to games to the inclusion of physics and artificial intelligence for generating amazing behaviors and animations. With augmented reality it is possible to use the environment as scenario for playing the game. Mechanical games can be developed so that users play against computer by manipulating real objects. Social networks open the possibility to generate game characters based on real persons, which user knows. All these technology improvements are directing the games to be more realistic. Besides that requiring physical movements allows users stop being sedentary players. Medicine. This field has many areas, which can be improved by augmented reality; one of them is surgery. Currently, tiny cameras are used to observe detailed images through a monitor of the insides of a patient; however, surgeons have to be changing their attention between monitor and patient, which could cause injury by inattention. Smart glasses can be a good solution to observe the video at the same time of observing the patient, besides additional information can be displayed, which could guide to the surgeon in the process. In cases where the presence of another expert is required, and due to distance is not possible to be there, the scene can be transmitted allowing the expert to emit his suggestions. Commerce. In recent years online sales have been increased thanks to proliferation of mobile devices and the possibility to perform secure transactions over them. Users can compare prices and get offers through Internet; however, there are products that cannot be proved to know whether them will be fit good or will look like the user wants, like shoes or clothes. There are stores that have settled mirrors that can show to customers how they will look at wearing the garment. Mobile applications could provide information about who of customer's friends have bought something similar and how they look, in order to take a better decision. Education. A better learning experience can be obtained by allowing students to interact with representations of knowledge beyond only concepts transmission. The way in that knowledge is transmitted allows students to understand and acquire the knowledge easily. Computer animations, experiment simulation, and interactive activities have been widely used in education to transfer knowledge. Augmented reality encourages the possibility to observe more realistic experiment simulations, or gather extra information related to a topic to understand better fundamentals; also, the experience in the learning activity is improved, and generates a better concentration of students. There are many fields, which are being improved by augmented reality applications, but there are gaps that need to be filled to generate more useful and secure applications. Software development methodologies should be defined for this kind of applications in order to reduce security risks, accelerate development, and ensure quality. Communication protocols, to establish an open communication and discovery of services between wearable devices, could improve usability. New applications developed in every field mentioned before will be addressed deeper in the rest of the chapter.  



Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

 

21 - Mobile Technical Infrastructure to Assist Enterprises in Evaluating and Implementing Mobile Applications


There is a tremendous amount of interest in developing mobile enterprise computing applications, driven by recent advancements in mobile technologies and standards, as well as an increasing mobile workforce population. However, many enterprises are uncertain of the various options they may have due to the emerging nature of mobile computing technologies. Additionally, they are concerned about the integration of mobile technologies with existing IT infrastructure and applications. In this chapter, we propose a methodology to help enterprises develop business strategies and architectures for mobile computing. A generic mobile technical infrastructure is presented to assist enterprises in evaluating and implementing mobile applications. Software standards that may have major impacts on mobile technical architectures and application development are discussed. Finally, the implications of the proposed methodology for mobile computing for practitioners and researchers are discussed in the conclusion. Keywords: Mobile computing; web services; mobile technical architecture; business strategies, standards. 1. Emerging trends of mobile computing The twenty-first century workforce is becoming increasingly mobile. A recent study predicted the number of mobile workers in the India will rise from 92 million in 2001 to 105 million in 2016 while the non-mobile workforce will decline by 2 million to 53.8 million by 2016 [27, 42]. Therefore, two-thirds of Indian employees will be mobile workers by 2016. Mobile workers are defined in this study as workers who spend more than 20% of their time away from their desks attending meetings, traveling, or telecommuting from home. Some players in the mobile computing market focus on consumer oriented contents and service, such as ring-tones, MP3 music, and MMS [41]. However, according to studies from IT research firms, 40% of companies will use wireless technology for business applications by 2016, up from just 5% in 1999 [44]. According to this trend, more than 50% of companies have or will have wireless connectivity to corporate systems by 2016. The aggressive deployment of mobile computing is in part driven by recent advancements in mobile computing technologies and high payback for effective application of mobile technologies. Some studies show that the productivity of mobile workers may be improved by 30% when proper mobile technologies are deployed [10]. The abundance of emerging mobile technologies and standards as well as expanding opportunities to capitalize on them has created a lot of confusion among business managers and IT architects. We have developed a methodology to help organizations plan and build enterprise-wide mobile computing applications. The methodology proposed in this chapter is an attempt to provide a comprehensive strategic framework to identify business opportunities for mobile business and commerce, as well as a roadmap and action plans to develop and deploy mobile applications. This methodology is intended to help firms to realize the potential benefits of mobile technologies more easily. Section 2 of this chapter presents the life-cycle phases of the methodology. Section 3 discusses how to analyze the mobility of business processes. Section 4 is a detailed discussion of the development of a mobile computing architecture and emerging mobile technologies. Section 5 presents several important software standards that are important to mobile architectures and application development. This chapter is concluded with a discussion of how this proposed methodology may be improved and validated, as well as a call for further research to advance our understanding of the development and deployment of mobile computing in enterprises. 2. A methodology for building mobile computing applications The enterprise-wide mobile computing is the use of mobile devices, wireless networks and Internet connections to access enterprise data and applications. The lack of methodologies to help organizations in their mobile computing initiatives may have hindered the deployment of enterprise-wide mobile applications. Based on the literature regarding systems development, business process reengineering methodologies [3, 4], information systems planning methods [20, 36], and mobile computing [11, 13], a methodology for building enterprise-wide mobile computing applications was developed. The proposed methodology shown in Figure 1 is depicted in IDEF0 diagramming notation [18]. In IDEF0, a process is represented as a rectangular box and its relationships to inputs, controls, outputs, and mechanism (ICOMs) can be interpreted as: Figure 1: A Methodology for Building Enterprise-Wide Mobile Applications "Inputs are transformed by the process into outputs according to controls, using mechanisms." The boxes in Figure 1 represent five phases of the life cycle for building enterprise-wide mobile computing applications. The arrows coming in contact with the box from the left are the inputs to a life cycle phase; arrows coming out from the right ride of a box are outputs (i.e., deliverables); controls are shown as arrows coming in contact with the top side of a box representing constraints and guidelines governing the conduct of a phase. Mechanisms are arrows coming in contact with the bottom of a box representing systems, organizations, or individuals that perform activities in a life-cycle phase. The methodology should be treated as a suggestion and a general guideline. Companies can plan and develop mobile applications by conducting activities in various phases in the life cycle iteratively and concurrently to allow quick prototyping and feedbacks. The five major phases for building mobile computing applications are described as follows: 1. Develop enterprise-wide mobile strategies: Companies engage in mobile computing initiatives because they want to take advantage of emerging mobile computing technologies as well as supporting an increasingly mobilized workforce to gain competitive advantages in the marketplace and to better serve their customers. A mobile strategy team should consist of top level management (e.g., chief executive officer, chief information officer, chief technology officer, and business-line managers). The process of creating enterprise-wide mobile strategies should be based on existing business strategies and objectives, as well as high-level understanding of mobile technology's trends and impacts. Details of this phase are further discussed in Section 3. 2. Analyze the mobility of business processes: Until recently, enterprise communication and computing support was limited to desktop computing tools that glue employees to their desks. Mobile technologies enable organizations to redesign their business processes such that their sale forces and field services representatives can perform critical activities at customer sites. In this phase, the mobile analysis team will develop business process maps and identify promising mobile projects that may bring in more revenues and result in better customer service. Section 4 elaborates the activities involved and approaches in analyzing process mobility. 3. Develop an enterprise-wide mobile technical architecture: A comprehensive mobile technical architecture will be developed in this phase based on mobile business strategies, mobility analysis of business process map, as well as mobile application portfolios developed in the previous two phases. The technical architecture will allow companies to invest wisely in mobile technologies based on current IT infrastructure and mobile standards so that the development and deployment costs for mobile applications may be reduced. Section 5 explains important components of a mobile technical architecture. The roles of standards that are important for the development of a mobile technical architecture are discussed in Section 6. 4. Build mobile applications: The most obvious constraints in building applications for mobile devices are smaller screen sizes, less efficient data entry methods, and limited local CPU power. Keyboards and mice are normally not available for small mobile devices. Developers may need to learn new development tools and observe these constraints in building mobile applications [19]. The first step in mobile application design to reduce user input requirements by providing point and click interfaces as well as delivering only the most critical contents to mobile users. A step further is to take advantage of special features in mobile devices such as Soft-Key, telephone dialing, and voice capabilities of cell phones. An example of a design method for the building of mobile applications has been proposed by Beaulieu [2]. 5. Deploy mobile applications: Proper user training and support are required in the deployment phase. Change management strategies should be applied along with mobile application deployment to ensure effective behavioral changes of people who are involved in these mobilized processes. Performance measures of the mobile business processes and workforce should be implemented to provide justification for the investment in mobile computing and to receive feedback for improving mobile enabled business processes continuously. The first three phases in this methodology are important for enterprise-wide mobile computing effort in the methodology. The last two phases are more project-specific. In this chapter, we focus on the enterprise-wide aspect of mobile computing and will discuss the only first three phases in detail. 3. Develop enterprise-wide mobile computing strategies Mobile computing allows the right information to be available to the right person to perform critical business processes wherever and whenever. The mobile strategy team should extend e-business and e-commerce business models to identify strategic areas where mobile computing applications may have the highest payback opportunities. From a business perspective, companies need to focus on supporting their employees, customers, and trading partners involved in their core business processes. These strategic areas include: 1. Business to employee (B2E): B2E applications can be classified into two categories: a. Horizontal mobile applications are professional productivity tools, often been referred to as Personal Information Management (PIM), including email, instant message, calendar, and Internet access. Email is probably one of the most important mobile horizontal applications. Some researchers believed that email is "a proxy for a business process" [45]. It is often used in the context of information workflows related to enterprise business applications. b. Vertical mobile applications directly support core business processes by providing mobile access to enterprise applications such as sale force automation, field worker automation, inventory control, warehouse management, and logistics. 2. Business to consumers (B2C): B2C mobile applications are often referred to as mobile commerce (m-commerce). M-commerce is an extension of e-commerce. Mobile applications in B2C that are unique and promising in the m-commerce space include [15]: a. Wireless data delivery service is a critical element of mobile commerce. Popular services are weather and sports reports, traffic conditions, financial news, stock portfolio tracking, stock quotes, and telephone directory assistance. b. M-commerce transactions often require immediate actions for people on the run. For example, typical m-commerce transactions include buying tickets, purchasing goods from vending machines via wireless devices, and trading stocks. c. M-commerce marketing functions may alert users of shops and special sales based on their locations. Businesses should be aware of difficulties facing m-ecommerce in this planning stage [31, 41]. M-commerce applications should be designed so that less steps and data entry efforts are required to go through a transaction. Planners should be briefed on emerging mobile technologies trends and understand their implications to their businesses. For example, using location-based services to advertise sales to customers at the proximity of your stores is a unique and innovative mobile application. Innovation in B2C mobile applications can be found in some vertical industries such as health industry and retail industry [5, 29]. 3. Business to business (B2B): Few mobile and wireless B2B applications have been developed. Building mobile web sites for B2B exchanges such that mobile devices can submit bids and receive alerts of new bids seems to be a promising application in this area [30]. In general, M-commerce tends to be more successful in Japan and Europe but is very slow to catch on in the India [8]. The driving force for the deployment of mobile and wireless devices in the India will be enterprise-wide mobile applications. A new vision of a mobile enterprise should emerge from this phase to guide the formulation of mobile strategies and goals. The mobile strategy team needs to communicate this vision and a business case for action to all stakeholders to ensure an organizational commitment to mobile computing. The team should also evaluate the issues involved in introducing mobile applications from technical, organizational, and cultural perspectives to plan the implementation of mobile computing initiative accordingly. The next phase after mobile strategies have been developed is to have a more in-depth analysis of the mobility of core business and applications as discussed in the next session. 4. Analyze the mobility of business processes The challenge of mobile computing strategies and implementation is to identify and select opportunities for deployment that will provide the most payback. Based on the general mobile strategies developed in the first phase, the mobile analysis team needs to develop a business process model in order to identify business activities in which increasing the mobility of these activities can improve business performance and gain competitive advantages [11]. Using a value chain model to guide the development of the process map is a good starting point in this phase [14]. The analysis team should educate the business managers involved in this analysis phase about the capability of mobile computing technologies and challenge their current business practices and procedures constantly. The mobility analysis team needs to create a process map of core business processes first. Based on the process map, the team can identify activities in these processes in which remote access to data and applications may improve these processes. The facilitator could asks the analysis team members the following triggering questions to help them analyze the process model: • What is the mobility of employees who are in involved in this process? • What are the major activities of the process? • Where are these activities performed currently? • What information and applications are required while performing these activities? • Can employees perform some activities while working onsite with customers? Several heuristics developed in business reengineering have been adapted to determine how to increase the mobility of an enterprise [4]. • Bring mobility to office-bound activities: Enabling mobile access to information allows corporations move office tasks into the field where their customers are. Mobile access to information (such as service records and product pricing) will empower employees in the customer-facing processes to make more informed decisions to serve customers better. Information generated while away from offices can be captured at the place where events occur. • Extend mobile access to customers and trading partner: The processes in the process map should be an extended e-process map that contains links to customers and trading partners. By extending business processes such that mobile customers can access data relevant to cross-organizational business processes, an enterprise is forging a stronger tie to their customers. • Create new and innovative mobile applications: New applications, such as mobile web sites, downloadable offline data sets and applications, location-based services, and mobile commerce, are new areas that an enterprise should exploit to extend their reach to employees, customers, and trading partners. New or reengineered business processes and applications should be designed to embrace these new services. • Extend current enterprise-wide applications: Mobile computing offers a new channel for communication and data access to improve operational efficiency and increase added value to customers [13]. Enhancing current client-server based enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) enterprise-wide application packages with mobile technologies is a natural logical step forward towards operational efficiency [33]. At the end of this phase, the mobile analysis team needs to evaluate and prioritize mobile projects or applications to be implemented by considering two major factors. The first factor is the impacts and the benefits of these mobile projects. The second factor is the difficult in implementing these mobile projects. A more detailed cost-benefit analysis may be required to select appropriate projects for implementation. Ideally, one should select projects that have a high impact but are easy to implement. Mobile projects that have the following characteristics should be given high priority: 1. Projects that target broken business processes. These broken processes are caused by the lack of mobile access to data or by the complicated data synchronization procedures involved between mobile devices and back-office systems. 2. Projects that deal with customer-facing processes. These processes have high added-value and involve front-line workers including sale force automation, field worker automation, and mobile CRM. 3. Projects that involve time-sensitive processes. The cycle-time of these business processes can be reduced by capturing data in computer readable format at the point of creation. Hence, companies can eliminate duplicated data entry from different applications. 4. Projects which are easy to implement. The development team should choose some quick and effective mobile projects at the beginning of the mobile initiative to secure continuous support from top management and ensure buy-ins from stakeholders. The analysis team should involve functional area managers, mobile workforce, and trading partners to brainstorm new ideas and learn to challenge basic assumptions of why certain activities in processes need to be done in the office. Creative applications of mobile technologies are often coupled with the conceptual breakthroughs of business practices. New processes and applications may be developed to create more added-value for the mobile enterprise. 5. Develop a mobile computing technical architecture Gartner, and IT research firm, predicted that "more than 50 percent of mobile applications deployed at the start of 2002 will be obsolete by the end of 2002 [23]." Many applications get outdated quickly due to the complexity of the various mobile technologies involved. The best practice in managing these constantly evolving and competing technologies is to define and develop a standard-based mobile computing technical architecture. A sound mobile technical architecture is an extension and enhancement of existing IT infrastructure components to facilitate the integration between mobile applications and existing IT applications. A comprehensive mobile architecture can also enhance efficiency in developing and deploying new mobile applications [13]. We have developed a generic mobile computing architecture, depicted in Figure 2, based on recommendations from IT vendors and researchers [3, 9, 11, 28, 45]. Standards that are critical for defining an enterprise-wide mobile computing architecture are addressed in Section 6. Figure 2 A Mobile Computing Technical Architecture 5.1 Mobile clients Mobile clients consist of mobile devices, mobile operating systems (OS), and client-side mobile application software. Mobile devices include cell phones and low-end PDAs that have Web access, as well as high-end PDAs and notebook computers that have wireless network connections. There are many mobile operating systems for PDAs (e.g., Pilot Research's Palm OS and Microsoft's Pocket PC). Additional programming frameworks (i.e., virtual machines) such as J2ME and .NET Compact Framework, specifically designed to run on mobile devices, may be required to deploy some offline applications. For consumer oriented cell phones, Symbian OS is a popular mobile OS for phone-based devices supporting 2.5G and 3G networks and Multimedia Message Service (MMS) [35]. All mobile devices are expected to have a wireless Internet connection, Web browsing capability, and some degree of local process capability. Horizontal mobile applications include personal information management (PIM), messaging services such as email, short message services, and multimedia message services [17]. Vertical mobile enterprise applications can be custom-built or are extensions of ERP, CRM, and SCM packages for mobile workforce. Enterprise applications are the main driver of mobile computing growth in India. High-end PDAs and notebook computers have better input mechanisms, large screen size, and more local processing power; therefore, they are better positioned to support online mobile enterprise applications that require both online and disconnected offline processing. 5.2 Wireless networks Wireless deployments have been accelerated more recently, including a rush to serve data over cellular networks (2.5G-3G) and wireless LAN (Wi-Fi). In the near future, applications can expect always-on connectivity from anywhere. IDC estimates that 85 million notebook PCs will be sold in 2016. Most of them are expected to contain Wi-Fi. There are three types of wireless networks that compliment each other to serve different needs. 1. Personal Area Networks (PANs) are short-range to link an individual user's computing and communication devices, such as PDA, notebook, cell phone, and printer. The primary technologies are infrared (IrDA) and Bluetooth [16]. It is touted as cable-less technology that enables data synchronization, peer-to-peer ad hoc file exchanges, and printing without using cables to connect these devices [12]. Earlier efforts to implement Bluetooth encountered adoption barriers including security and compatibility issues. 2. Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs) may become a major driver for wireless networking of mobile devices. The dominant standard for WLAN is IEEE 802.11b, also referred to as Wi-Fi (Wireless Fidelity) supports a data rate of 12 Mbps. The data transmission rate is a little better than the 10 Mbps data rate of 10-BaseT Ethernet, but less than 100-BaseT Fast Ethernet's 100 Mbps. For most enterprise applications, the speed is appropriate. For example, "the paradigm shift to notebook computers as the default platform" was completed at Intel by the end of 2002 [10]. There are increasingly more hotspots in public places, hotel, conference rooms that are equipped with base stations to support wireless LAN connections that provide access to the Internet. 3. Wireless Wide Area Networks (WWANs) are provided mostly by wireless network carriers. There are several generations of technologies and standards available in the marketplace. The first generation of cellular wireless (1G) was based on analog technology designed to carry voice. The second-generation (2G) technology converts voice to digital data for transmission over the air and then back to voice. Most 2G systems provide 9.6–14.4-Kbps circuit-switched data service. 2.5G refers to technology that is added to a 2G network to provide packet-switching data service. In practice, 2.5G is synonymous with the GPRS technology that has been added to GSM networks. The third-generation (3G) systems have been designed for both voice and data. By International Telecommunications Union's definition, 3G systems must provide a packet-switching data service from 144-Kbps to 2Mbps. The availability of 3G WWAN is slower than expected. Wireless gateways are required to connect the wireless carrier's networks to the Internet in order to support Internet-based applications. The buildup of wireless LANs is not only occurring inside corporate campuses, but also at publicly accessible hotspots such hotels, airports, college campuses, and conference centers. People can logon to these public WLANs to access the Internet. For example, Starbucks started to offer T-Mobile Hotspot's Wi-Fi service at 1200 locations on August 21, 2002 [1, 21]. The usage of wireless LANs in public places are encroaching on the domain of 3G network [45]. 5.3 Data synchronization Data synchronization servers are necessary when client mobile devices such as PDAs and notebooks are capable of handling data offline. Mobile devices using software such as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes often need to have access to "personal information" including address book, to-do lists, e-mail, and a calendar. Business data that need to be stored offline on mobile device such as customer orders and product data may require the use of mobile versions of database management systems, such as SyBase SQL Anywhere, Microsoft SQL Server CE, Oracle Lite, etc. Mobile database software packages have a much smaller memory footprint. For example, SQL Server CE delivers its functionality in approximately one megabyte [26]. A synchronization server may be needed to handle the data synchronization between the mobile databases and centralized database servers. Data synchronization services simplify data exchange between mobile devices and back-office systems. New database programming models have also emerged to support offline and disconnected data management and batched database updates. For example, ADO.NET in the .NET Framework allows programmers retrieve data from database servers or XML data sources into datasets (i.e., in-memory databases). Data that needs to be accessed by disconnected mobile devices can be stored offline as XML files or in mobile databases. Changes made to data locally can be sent to the server based on an optimistic concurrency control mechanism when the mobile devices are connected to the network. 5.4 Mobile application servers Mobile application servers provide a broad range of functions, sometimes under different product labels. Major functions in a typical mobile application server include: content adaptation, notification, and security. 1. Content Adaptation or Transcoding Services: Various markup languages are used by different mobile devices. Building contents in formats specific for each mobile device is very costly and impractical. There are server-based solutions that dynamically translate Web contents and applications into multiple markup languages and optimize them for delivery to mobile devices. IBM's WebSphere Transcoding Publisher [7] and Oracle 9i Wireless are examples of such products. Microsoft takes a different approach by providing a programming tool, Mobile Information Toolkit, to support the development of mobile Web applications in one code base. Contents can be generated dynamically in various formats for more than one hundred devices. 2. Notification services: In an increasingly mobile environment, people want access to the information they need regardless of where they are. Notification services can provide data subscription and delivery mechanisms. Applications that use notification services can provide their customers and employees with the information they need when they need it to empower them to make timely and informed decisions [6, 26]. The user is required to subscribe to the service by specifying triggering events when the notification should be generated and sent to the user. Delivery preferences can be specified in advanced. Notifications are sent to users' mobile devices as SMS or to their e-mail accounts. Notification service is an essential component of the mobile infrastructure and is a unique feature in some innovative mobile applications. 3. Security: Securing information from unauthorized access is a major problem for any network – wire-line or wireless. In a mobile enterprise, anytime and anywhere access to mission-critical data by mobile workers is necessary for them to perform effectively in the field. Such a trend is a major security challenge for the mobile infrastructure because wireless communications rely on public airways. For sensitive business data, proper measures, such as secure end-to-end encryption, are required to protect the privacy and ensure the integrity of the data. There are multiple facets of security in mobile computing including: network security, system security, information security, and physical security. Security mechanisms of existing IT infrastructures provide the basic foundation for mobile security management. Security technologies may be embedded in mobile devices and also integrated in various layers of mobile architecture. Important security technologies include firewalls, authentication servers, biometrics, cryptography, and Virtual Private Network (VPN) [38]. 6. Standards for mobile computing: Markup languages and Web services Many standards have been developed to provide interoperability among various mobile devices and software components. A mobile computing architecture should be defined and developed according to standards to ensure the flexibility and expandability of the mobile architecture. In this section, we focus our discussion on software standards for mobile computing. 6.1 XML and markup languages XML definition language is a meta-language to define new markup languages. Currently, there are two "standards" used as XML definition languages: XML 1.0 W3C Recommendation and XML Schema. The structure of a document is defined by XML DTD or XSD files. The content is captured in actual XML documents. There are two approaches to handle the display aspect of XML documents: XSL and XML parsers. XSL (eXtensible Stylesheet Language) 1.0 is a W3C Recommendation [39] that specifies how one can convert an XML document to another document format. XML parsers are program libraries that can be used by a programming language to process XML data. There are several web page specification markup languages such as WML and cHTML. Wireless Markup Language (WML) 1.0 used in WAP-enabled phones is a XML-compliant document format. cHTML used in DoCoMo's iMode is a subset of HTML for small information appliances. WAP 2.0 has adopted XHTML which is a reformulation of HTML 4 as an XML 1.0 application. iMode may migrate to XHTML in the near future [34]. When a mobile device requests a web page implemented by a server-side scripting program such as ASP and JSP, the program can detect the requesting browser type by examining the HTTP_USER_AGENT CGI variable [43]. The program can then dynamically apply an appropriate XSL template file to transform an XML document to a format (e.g., WML, cHTML, XHTML, and HTML) that is appropriate for the requesting mobile device. 6.2 SynchML As mobile computing devices continue to proliferate, users will demand ubiquitous and consistent access to up-to-date information and applications. IT organizations will need standards to ensure consistency and a common data protection protocol for mobile device access to the corporate server. SyncML is the leading open-industry standard for universal synchronization of PIM data leveraging XML standards [22, 32]. SyncML is sponsored by leading mobile and wireless organizations and vendors such as Ericsson, IBM, Motorola, Nokia, and OpenWave, etc. It is a standard for implementing two-way synchronizing mechanism for all devices and applications over any network. Some vendors have remained non-committal. For example, Microsoft has developed its own ActiveSync synchronization software for its Pocket PCs for applications such as Microsoft Outlook. 6.3 Web services Web services provide a standard-based approach to implementing distributed components. Web services offer data and business logic services over standard protocols such as HTTP, XML, and SOAP over the Internet. Gartner, an IT research firm, defines Web services as "loosely coupled software components delivered over Internet-standard technologies" [37]. "Loosely coupled" implies that the Web services are impendent of any programming languages, platforms, and object models. Using the ubiquitous and low-cost Internet, Web services can easily provide software functions over the internal networks and the public Internet for mobile computing applications [24] Mobile computing devices that are capable of consuming Web services can use distributed components implemented as Web services to get access to legacy data and applications [40]. This approach will enrich the functionality of mobile applications as well as increase the reusability of distributed software components. As a result, maintenance of business logic that is shared by both mobile and non-mobile applications will be easier. 7. Conclusions With mobile computing and wireless networking, people can conduct businesses at any time without been constrained by the availability of physical networking connections or specific computing platforms. With information delivered to employees at their fingertips while away from their offices, employees can increase their responsiveness and productivity. The proposed methodology in this chapter is an attempt to identify some guidelines and formulate a life-cycle approach to assisting enterprises in planning and developing enterprise-wide mobile strategies and applications. The methodology may also help researchers identify areas where further research may be called for. For example, in our literature research, we found that there is a lack of research on mobile workforces. More rigorous and large scale studies on mobile applications usage patterns are very much in need. Field studies of how companies plan and deploy their mobile strategies in conjunction with measurements of the resulting business performance improvement can help the further development of the proposed methodology.  



Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP

22 - Using Cognitive Psychology to Understand Anticipated User Experience (AUX) in Computing Products 



ISO FDIS 9241-210 defines user experience as a person's perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service. Emphasis on this definition is on ‘’ Use’’ and ‘’Anticipated Use’’. Whereas many user experience researchers may be conversant with explaining a person's perceptions and responses experience that result from the use of a product, system or service. However, not much explanation has given on a person's perceptions and responses that result from anticipated use of a product/service (Anticipated User Experience), or even how it can be achieved. AUX in any product or service plays an important role in user experience. It influences users’ desire for the product even before the product is made available to the user. It is closely associated with the marketing and awareness stage of a product or service, where the product’s image is formed in a user’s mind either through marketing (advertisements) or a product’s appearance. In this paper, AUX is defined as a positive imagination, fantasy and excitement that a user feels about a given product or service before the product is made available to the user. In the quest to better understand Anticipated User Experience, this chapter applies the theory of cognitive psychology and its principles to best explain how Anticipated User Experience occurs and how it can be achieved. This chapter goes a long way in informing designers of computing products on the significance of attaining Anticipated User Experience and how it can be achieved.

Two methods were majorly used as discussed below:

i. Literature Review Literature review was one of the methods used to obtain requirements which influence Anticipated User eXperience. Literature from different sources was reviewed namely; journals, conference proceedings, books and research reports. Through literature review, this research was able to elicit a number of requirements that can positively influence AUX

ii. Survey We carried out a survey to determine the extent to which the requirements gathered from the literature would influence Anticipated User eXperience and lead to acceptance of mobile phones for voting in a developing country like Uganda.

The survey was divided into two parts:(Our computing product was a mobile phone; and its acceptance and usage in national voting)

Survey 1: This was carried out to determine the number of respondents who were in favor and those not in favor of using their mobile phones for voting

Survey 2: This was carried out to establish the extent to which the elicited Anticipated User eXperience requirements from the literature that influence demand for using mobile phones for voting among respondents who were not in favor of using mobile phones for voting


Questionnaire : go and evaluate :)

or GO to TOP