Creating a Taxonomy for Mobile Commerce Innovations Using Social Network and Cluster Analyses

Abstract

Increasing numbers of people are spending time focused on "the third screen" of a mobile device. Through ubiquitous connectivity, personalization, and affordability, such mobile devices have become much more than just entertainment handsets.In particular, e-commerce has harnessed the power of wireless computing to expand to mobile commerce (m-commerce), thus providing consumers with commercial services on the go. Because such services are often driven by customer input, it is important to consider the relevance of consumers to the development of new service offerings. We therefore dissect innovations in m-commerce by conducting a textual analysis of all filed m-commerce patent applications (over 2,300 in total). By using social network analysis and cluster analysis, we subsequently capture the focal innovation areas in m-commerce and develop a corresponding taxonomy of these innovations. The results clearly illustrate the importance of consumer empowerment and co-creation in the context of m-commerce innovations.KEY WORDS AND PHRASES: Cluster analysis, co-creation, empowerment, innovation, mobile commerce, social network analysis, taxonomy.Mobile commerce, or m-commerce, is considered by many to be the next wave of electronic commerce (e-commerce) [44]. Because mobile devices such as cell phones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), and other handheld computers offer real-time communication and anytime-anywhere access, they can provide an important platform for such services as financial transactions (e.g., e-banking, buying, selling, payments, coupons), location-based queries (e.g., map services, traffic advisories), entertainment (e.g., gaming, ticketing), education, health care, inventory management and tracking, and even enterprise resource planning [25]. Skiba et al. captured this versatile nature of m-commerce by defining it as the "use of mobile devices to communicate, inform, transact" and entertain "using text and data via connection to public or private networks" [68, p. 8].As with many other new technologies, the promise of m-commerce initially outpaced the actual delivery of m-commerce applications and services. As noted by Liang and Wei in their introduction to the 2004 special issue of the International Journal of Electronic Commerce on "Mobile Commerce Applications," although m-commerce is "a promising technology for driving the second wave of e-commerce" [44, p. 15], "many attempts in m-commerce have so far failed to meet expectations" [44, p. 7]. Since that time, however, progress has been made toward fulfilling those early expectations. For example, more recent forecasts indicate that global retail m-commerce will reach $119 billion per year by 2015 (the equivalent of 8 percent of the total e-commerce market) [66].In 2003, Jarvenpaa et al. projected that "the success of m-commerce services is likely to depend on how flexible and malleable the technology is to all users to shape it to their individual and group needs in various social and business Downloaded by [New York University] at 21:

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