Evaluation of customer oriented success factors in mobile commerce using fuzzy AHP
Abstract: Purpose: With the
development of information technology, ordinary commercial activities are
evolving into e-commerce. In e-commerce, users can access services from any
place as long as information technology is available. Currently, e-commerce is
moving toward mobile commerce that allows users to do commercial activities
while they are moving. This study aims to elucidate the factors that affect
success in mobile commerce, and then evaluate and rate these factors by
analyzing components of commercial activity in the mobile internet environment
and give an evaluation method for mobile commerce in order to help researches
and managers to determine the drawbacks and opportunities.
Design/methodology/approach: A consumer survey was conducted through a
structured undisguised questionnaire towards meeting the objectives of the
study. An online questionnaire constituted the data collection instrument,
while only internet users participated in the sample. The main goal of the
questionnaire is to identify the success factors or criteria and sub-criteria
for mobile commerce from the viewpoint of users' perception and to assess the
decision-making executives for pair-wise comparisons using the fuzzy analytic
hierarchical process (FAHP).
Findings: A subjective and objective integrated approach has been put
forward to determine attributes weights in Fuzzy AHP problems. The study
identified the success factors or criteria and sub-criteria for mobile commerce
from the viewpoint of users' perception. The main attractive factors for the
customer are the trust and mobility factors. In addition, content quality,
system quality, use, support, personalization factors are also important.
Research limitations/implications: Sampling is a major limitation in this
study. Since the survey was conducted based on a sample in Bangladesh, the
prudent reader may need to interpret the results of the study with caution,
particularly with respect to the generalization of research findings to
Bangladesh mobile commerce customers as a whole.
Practical implications: The principal practical implication is to
identify the success factors or criteria and sub-criteria for mobile commerce
from the viewpoint of users' perception. The criteria and decision alternatives
or sub-criteria that are applied in this evaluation were selected based on the
feedback from the questionnaire and literature review. On the other hand, from
a professional point of view, future research should make several extensions to
measure users' satisfaction with mobile commerce using user satisfaction index
and evaluate commercial activities in ubiquitous environment, which is a
process in the transition of commerce, using the success factors and
alternatives of mobile commerce.
Originality/value: There are no comparative studies about evaluation of
customer oriented success factors for Bangladeshi mobile commerce users. A
structured analysis of such customer-oriented factors provides good insights,
and will help business managers to time the launch of mobile commerce
businesses. It will become a useful assessment model for predicting and
evaluating market tendencies.
Author: Golam Kabir, M. Ahsan
Akhtar Hasin
Journal Code: jptindustrigg110016
