The conceptual model of context for mobile commerce applications

Abstract

Mobile commerce applications adhering to anytime and anywhere paradigm, required to be flexible. They should be able to adapt their interface, services and content towards a certain context. Several proposals for definition of context have been already proposed originating from various areas related to mobile commerce. However, an integrated, formal and methodological approach for the determination and representation of context, adjusted to special characteristics of mobile commerce applications, has not been insofar presented. This is the challenge we address in this paper, through a conceptual model that includes: i) a clear and formal definition of context, ii) the depiction of its specific characteristics as metadata, iii) a methodology for its determination and iv) the presentation of an extension of class diagrams of UML for its representation, all of them tailored to the special nature of mobile commerce applications.

What Belongs to Context?

“…Especially the work of Anind K. Dey and Gregory D. Abowd is often used as a basis for application-specific or domainspecific definitions (see e.g., [10][11][12][13][14]). Dey and Abowd [3] According to the definition by Dey and Abowd [3], the most important characteristics for belonging to context are 1) characterising a situation and 2) being considered relevant.…”

Context management for m-commerce applications: determinants, methodology and the role of marketing

“…The alternative approach of defining context through a generic definition that can potentially accommodate any information as a context element, definitely provides the freedom to choose the context elements suitable for the specific situation. This definition needs, however, to be complemented with means allowing the identification and modelling of all relevant context parameters, otherwise context specification may be incomplete and the application's potential for adaptation will be diminished [5]. Indeed, most current context-aware systems employ a small portion of the available context, comprising typically of elements related to the user's identity and location [63].…”

“…In the area of mobile computing, efforts mainly target the development of adaptive systems having multichannel delivery and network adaptation as their main adaptation focus; the context was explored in alignment to this focus [5]. Multichannel delivery attempts to provide services, through web applications, that can be readily used on various diverse mobile devices with different hardware characteristics.…”

“…Notably, Benou and Vassilakis [5] present such a methodology, which however targets the design and development phases of the m-commerce application, and does not cover important phases of the application lifecycle, such as the feasibility study (including consideration of strategies to be implemented through the applications, definition of goals and measurable objectives) and the evaluation and maintenance. 4 The conceptual model of context for m-commerce applications…”

“…However, no theoretical framework for the management and standardization of these processes has been developed yet. Such a framework should offer the capability of (1) studying and analyzing consumer behaviour, (2) performing the identification of the m-commerce application context in a methodological and standardized way; context identification should lead to the recognition and cataloguing of the consumer's behavioural and environmental characteristics that are of importance to the success of m-commerce (3) defining the context in a way suitable for computerized information systems, (4) designing the software subsystems which will manage context and (5) designing the adaptation process of the m-commerce application to the changing context dimensions, (e.g. location), in order to offer value added and/or more effective and user friendly consumer-user services.…”