Technological Innovations In Mobile Commerce

Area of innovation with respect to the focus

Discuss about the Mobile Commerce within Technological Innovations.

Innovation can be defined as a new method with the help of which an organization can make excessive progress in a particular field or a dimension. In other words, innovation gives rise to better solutions which assist in meeting of the requirements. Such an innovation process can take place in various dimensions which range from processes, products, services, technologies and even business models. Innovation seeks to make the entire business process more effective so as to ensure that the business does not have to combat against the obsolete procedures which make it unsuccessful in the business domain (Niranjanamurthy et al. 2013).

As stated earlier, innovation can be of different types. In the given report, the technological innovation will be discussed along with practical examples. Technological innovation can mostly concentrate on use of technical knowledge and tools of different products and services which will enhance the features offered to the consumers (Alkhunaizan and Love 2013). Technological innovation comprises of activities which contribute to the designing and development of different products which improve the present products and help in increasing technological knowledge. The m-commerce technological innovation will be discussed in this aspect.

The mobile commerce was a term which was used by Kevin Duffey when the Global Mobile Commerce Forum was launched in order to deliver the capabilities of e-commerce directly into the customer`s hands with the access of wireless technology (Lu et al. 2015).  Mobile commerce is often taken to be an outlet or a store in the hands of the customer. The mobile ecommerce is a growing trend worth $230 billion US, and as per the statistics in 2016, around 67% of the mobile users make purchases using their phone. Even big brands like Walmart and Amazon, report that more than 60`5 of their online purchases by customers are done via mobile phones.

In 2015, M-commerce has made up around 25% of total ecommerce spending and it is forecasted that these figure will increase to 50% by 2025.

Money transfer

Money transfer is a component of digital payments which was earlier just facilitated by banks and later on by website desktop banking. However with the recent advent of technology, those service is also available using mobile phones and with just a few clicks. With applications like PayPal, PhonePe, PayTm and others the facilities have become easier. Various mobile companies like Vodafone and Airtel also provide the given service.

Given below are certain products and services available using the m-commerce technology

Mobile ticketing

The mobile phones can also be used to book tickets. These tickets can be for varying events and other related travel purposes (Malik, Kumra and Srivastava 2013). Tickets can also be sent easily the mobile phones and with the use of this the users can use their tickets easily and present them as a digital boarding pass.

Mobile vouchers, coupons and loyalty cards

The m-commerce technology can also be used for the distribution of coupons, vouchers and loyalty cards and other promotional strategies from the side of various retailers and e-commerce websites. When the user shall present these at the point of sales, they can avail the offers.

Information services

Various information based services like news, alerts, traffic reporting, emergency alerts, and location based notifications can be provided using mobile commerce (Lee and Chen 2014).

Mobile Banking

Even the banks and other financial services can be used as a mobile commerce device whereby the bank can promote its services easily.

Mobile marketing

Various companies can also use mobile phones as a source of marketing and advertisement purposes.

It was in 1997, that the term mobile commerce was coined and since then the given technology has advanced tremendously (Chong 2013).  In 1997, the company Coca-Cola made use of it. In 1998, the given technology was adapted to be the most innovative mobile product. It was in the same year that the first digital content was sold and ringtones were sold on the application.

In 1999, commercial platforms for m-commerce were launched. However it was not before 2000, that the m-commerce elated services actually started spreading rapidly. In 2002, the official standards were developed and the growth reached to around US$ billion 200 in 2004.

Since then the growth of m-commerce has not looked back. Mobile technology has been used for a wide variety of services like medical payment, food and others. In the year 2007, m-commerce adopted the application system and thereby moved away from the sms systems.

In 2011, the Google wallet application was launched and this gave rise to another dimension.

By the year 2013, Omni channel retailers started showing their presence on mobile commerce which created more opportunities for them (Maity and Dass 2014).

At present m-commerce technology has greatly used and more than 50% of the services are done using m-commerce facilities.

The different organizational members are going through extremely challenging face in today’s competitive environment. The management often has to exert pressure on the employees in order to ensure that the different targets are fulfilled easily (Khan, Talib and Faisal 2015). Hence for this purpose, it is important for them to be flexibly in terms of organization’s ability to be extremely flexible and adopt to the latest technology and use various innovative technologies as well in order to remain in the business. With the advent of technology, various changes have been brought about in the given sector and this is the reason why it becomes extremely important for any organization to ensure that it adapts to digital technology in order to survive.

Milestones for innovation

As the customers have started making the use of the technology through their mobiles, , the various business organizations have started adopting technologies that shall involve m-commerce in order to reach out to the different customers (Jaradat and Al Rababaa 2013).

Hence, businesses have braced m-commerce but doing so is not simple. For the purpose of incorporating m-commerce within their realm, business have required to change their business models (Hajli 2014). Earlier various organizations were product oriented and for this purpose, they did not feel the need to go customer centric but now it is not the case. Customer relationship management and customer centric are two key focus areas of the business. Being customer centric means adapting to m-commerce. Hence, it can be witnessed that m-commerce has changed the way businesses are conducted at present. Speed is considered to be a primary essence of a business enterprise and thus it is very important for the business to incorporate.

Various companies like Uber, Apple and Starbucks have incorporated m-commerce in their business strategy. Uber has incorporated a business model which is entirely based on m-commerce. The customer needs to download the application to avail the cab services as provided by the firm. Even Starbucks has adopted m-commerce to its model (Chong 2013). If a customer signs up for the services, they are offered a card which can be then used using a mobile application. Even apple has started using m-commerce to grow its business offerings through iTunes and payment wallets. Companies like Amazon have also introduced functions like 1 click buying for the customers.

Conclusion

Therefore from the given analysis it could be stated that mobile commerce is an innovation in the field of technology and has changed the dimensions in which a particular business enterprise functions. It has led to various facilities and this has caused the entire business models to have gone through a change. The given report has discussed various aspects of the m-commerce innovation which ranges from its milestones to its importance in the business domain. Furthermore, in the following sections, certain recommendations for the same have also been provided in order to ensure that the business engages in the given technological aspects to grow their business enterprise.

The following recommendations have been made for the development of m-commerce technology:

Mobile Image Recognition Technology

The given facility brings about information in the virtual world with a concept similar to that of window shopping. The users will be able to use their cameras to click a picture of a real product and upload it in an app which will help the user to find similar products on net. If they like the products, then they can purchase it. An example of this is Curalate which is an image recognition based startup.

Innovation has affected organizations management approach

Personalized Push Notifications 

Personalization is another key feature in the domain of business which allows the different retailers to send in push notifications to the users to view advertisements which they would like to engage in.

Augmented Reality Apps 

Augmented reality applications are those applications which allow the different consumers to have a real life experience of the product being offered in the given application. If the store has an augmented reality application then it can easily allow the app to adjust the shoppers camera and the customers can try and adjust their features accordingly (Chan and Yee-Loong Chong 2013). This technology is increasingly popular in the eye wear products. If the technology is further developed then it can bring out new opportunities.

Analytics and Predictive Technologies

Various analytics and Predictive technologies are the new future of mobile commerce. As stated earlier, personalization is often used to communicate with the community and hence, for this purpose the retailers need to analyze the big data which is available and use predictive analysis techniques to offer the buyers products which they generally need. This helps in simplifying the buying process and in turn increases customer retention.

References

Alkhunaizan, A. and Love, S., 2013. Effect of demography on mobile commerce frequency of actual use in Saudi Arabia. In Advances in information systems and technologies (pp. 125-131). Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg.

Chan, F.T. and Yee-Loong Chong, A., 2013. Analysis of the determinants of consumers'm-commerce usage activities. Online Information Review, 37(3), pp.443-461.

Chong, A.Y.L., 2013. A two-staged SEM-neural network approach for understanding and predicting the determinants of m-commerce adoption. Expert Systems with Applications, 40(4), pp.1240-1247.

Chong, A.Y.L., 2013. Predicting m-commerce adoption determinants: A neural network approach. Expert Systems with Applications, 40(2), pp.523-530.

Hajli, M.N., 2014. A study of the impact of social media on consumers. International Journal of Market Research, 56(3), pp.387-404.

Jaradat, M.I.R.M. and Al Rababaa, M.S., 2013. Assessing key factor that influence on the acceptance of mobile commerce based on modified UTAUT. International Journal of Business and Management, 8(23), p.102.

Khan, H., Talib, F. and Faisal, M.N., 2015. An analysis of the barriers to the proliferation of M-Commerce in Qatar: A relationship modeling approach. Journal of Systems and Information Technology, 17(1), pp.54-81.

Lee, H.M. and Chen, T., 2014. Perceived quality as a key antecedent in continuance intention on mobile commerce. International Journal of Electronic Commerce Studies, 5(2), p.123.

Lu, M.T., Hu, S.K., Huang, L.H. and Tzeng, G.H., 2015. Evaluating the implementation of business-to-business m-commerce by SMEs based on a new hybrid MADM model. Management Decision, 53(2), pp.290-317.

Maity, M. and Dass, M., 2014. Consumer decision-making across modern and traditional channels: E-commerce, m-commerce, in-store. Decision Support Systems, 61, pp.34-46.

Malik, A., Kumra, R. and Srivastava, V., 2013. Determinants of consumer acceptance of m-commerce. South Asian Journal of Management

Niranjanamurthy, M., Kavyashree, N., Jagannath, S. and Chahar, D., 2013. Analysis of e-commerce and m-commerce: advantages, limitations and security issues. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer and Communication Engineering, 2(6)