Conceptualising fun in mobile commerce environments

Abstract

Consumers use mobile commerce services to hedonically experience 'fun'. This research explores what consumer-oriented service strategies have been adopted to enhance the fun experience. This research is a case study using grounded theory to develop the conceptual model, represented by 15 propositions, suggesting that attention be focused in three areas; content, social and self orientations. The first, relates to the way in which the service is constructed or the service content orientation. Secondly, the personal nature of the medium focuses attention on the consumer's social orientation. Finally, the consumers' self orientation. Managerial and research implications are discussed.Keywords: fun; hedonic; mobile commerce; conceptual; case study; mobile communication. IntroductionThe purpose of this research is to explore the consumer's experience of fun in mobile commerce (mcommerce) service environments (Laukkanen and Lauronen, 2005;Park, 2006). This is because such services have rapidly become an important aspect of consumers' daily consumption behaviour (Pantzar, 2003; Davis and Sajtos, 2008). Many researchers, such as Kumar (2004), have projected exponential growth in mobile phone users (Barnes, 2002b) and the m-commerce market (Siau et al., 2001; Ghosh and Swaminatha, 2001;Ingram, 2001;Sliwa, 2001; Siemens Mobile Marketing Intelligence Department, 2002; Barnes, 2002a). While this growth has been attributed to the utilitarian versatility of such services and technological advancements that give consumers the ability to conduct complex transactions ubiquitously, little attention has been given to other factors, such as those that are related to the consumer's hedonistic desire to use m-commerce services (AlShaali and Varshney, 2005) and experience fun intrinsically. For example, customers who routinely engage in mobile banking (Zarifopoulos and Economides, 2009) may also be interactive with the banking brand by using their mobile messaging service to respond to a campaign. In essence, while engaging in telic-serious goal-directed behaviours (e.g., checking an account balance) they can also experience the paratelic-fun of the brand. Experiencing fun is important for consumers as it creates a state of enjoyment that can be described as the subjective feeling that is the physiological response to the cognitive evaluation of the service experience (Stratton and Hayes, 1999, p.90).Some researchers have begun to explore the consumers' hedonistic desire to experience the fun associated with using m-commerce services and its implications for existing practice (Agarwal and Karahanna, 2000; Barwise and Strong, 2002). They conclude that consumers' need to experience fun to alleviate the boredom associated with repetitive tasks, to enhance entertainment needs (Pantzar, 2003) and support peer-to-peer communications, interactivity or personalisation (Barnes and Scornavacca, 2004). Corporations such as Xbox and 20th Century Fox have begun to couple m-commerce services with other channels of communication (e.g....

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