The development of mobile service concepts: technologies, adoption and use: Master's thesis

This thesis studies the business models of different mobile service providers and identifies factors that affect the success of new mobile services. Pricing and billing, as well as security and privacy combined with the related legislation, are examined. The thesis researches the motives for and barriers to adopting mobile services. The means to maximise the user experience through the service design, and ways to im-plement a successful service launch are proposed. The different aspects of mobile marketing and a variety of mobile service contents, together with their market opportunities, are examined, and various mobile technologies and emerging technological developments are evaluated as well. A case study of a mobile service concept is introduced to validate the success factors in adoption of mobile services. The case mo-bile service is based on a Java mobile application, which is developed further and updated with new con-tent. The case study was realised as a field trial in order to research the adoption and use of the mobile service, and the technology of the mobile concept. The field trial was evaluated with users’ feedback to research the factors that affect consumers’ attitudes towards mobile services and marketing. Usefulness was revealed to have the strongest impact on attitude towards a mobile service, with context information and attitude acting as significant determinants of the intention to use the service. Trust and utility were found to have direct relationships with attitude toward mobile marketing, whereas context information, reference group influence and attitude acted as drivers of intention to receive mobile marketing messages. Further development areas in the created mobile service concept were also identified. The case study re-sults can be used to guide the industry players’ evaluation of the adoption potential of new mobile ser-vices and in the creation of mobile marketing campaigns, but treating wide generalisation of the findings with some care. Valuable experiences gathered by field trial organisers can be utilised in future launches of new mobile services.