An empirical investigation of mobile service channel usage and mutual influence with internet service channel

Abstract

Advances in information technology have increased the number of people using mobile device and have made mobile service pervasive. In spite of increase of rapid diffusion and usage of mobile service, previous papers mainly focused on figuring out factors influencing the mobile technology adoption but understanding of customer behavior regarding the usage of mobile channel is lacking. Moreover, mobile service channel is one of alternative channels and customer choice of one service channel affects customer use of other channels. We investigate the relationship between service channels. Specifically, this paper empirically investigates the mutual influence between internet and mobile channels in banking service through VAR test using data of Korea online banking service. Our result shows that, as customer's use of mobile channel increases, it has influences on internet channel use, and vice versa. Customers using mobile banking service channel tend to use internet banking service as a complementary channel. On the contrary, the use of internet banking service does not have an influence on the use of mobile banking service channel. Additionally, the trait of this relationship depends on the characteristic of task. Also cross channel influence is differentiated by banking service task. This paper provides the understanding of customer behavior in multiple service channels and implication that strategic management of multi-channel has to be concerned in terms of relationship between service channels.

An Examination of Home Internet and Mobile Device Use in the U.S.

“…They found that customers used the alternative online channels in a complementary manner and that the type of transaction also influenced the channel choice. Jung and Lee (2011) examined the tradeoffs between Internet and mobile device usage to access banking services and argued that use of these two channels might be either complements or substitutes. Their study indicated that (1) when online services are adopted as a substitute for traditional (non-online) services, HIU and MDU are deployed by users in a complementary manner, especially so as the users are acquiring familiarity with online services, but (2) MDU could ultimately supplant and become a substitute for HIU due to their greater convenience.…”

“…Similarly, Paine, Reips, Stiegerc, Joinsona, and Buchanand (2007) cited fears of loss of privacy, viruses, and identity theft as factors limiting acceptance of Internet applications, and these risks may be viewed as still greater for mobile devices. Jung and Lee (2011), also note that perceived risk is greater for mobile devices than for HIU and this limits the substitution of MDU for HIU -that is, as long as MDU is perceived as having higher risk, users will prefer using the Internet from a home PC for more sensitive services instead of using of mobile devices for these services.…”