Mobile commerce in the most advanced markets : current situation and trends

E-commerce has changed today's business environment dramatically since it was started to use by businesses. It reduced costs of doing business, improved product/service quality and customer satisfaction, and generated new channels for product distribution. Customers loved it because it made purchasing and selling process much more easier than ever and also It helped to create favorable conditions for economies to implement a shift from the labor intensive paradigm to a knowledge worker paradigm that is strongly expected to be dominant in the future (Mirchandani & Motwani, 2001). Nowadays a new kind of e-commerce stated to gain popularity especially in developed countries. This new way of e-commerce is called as mobile commerce or m-commerce. Mobile commerce can be seen as another application of e- commerce but in reality thanks to mobile technology, it has extra attributes which e-commerce hasn't, such as ubiquity, convenience, localization and personalization. Mobile commerce combines the advantages of mobile communication with existing e-commerce services. Due to these new advantages, It started to become new phenomenon among customers. Its popularity is increasing every single day especially in U.S., Europe and Japan. This paper focuses on identifying mobile consumers' behaviors and new trends in mobile market. In the end, It compares different markets to provide deep understanding about mobile market. Mobile commerce is a fast growing market which brings great opportunities for businesses. For this reason, the main objective of the project is to understand prevailing trends in m-commerce, give some insight about main m-commerce markets and prove the importance of mobile commerce with some real world examples. This project will answers following questions. • How is the current satiation of m-commerce market • What are the top mobile activities among mobile owners • What are the top mobile web categories among mobile owners • What are the demographic characteristics of mobile owners • What are the current purchasing trends among mobile owners • What are the differences and similarities among main markets • What will be the future of mobile commerce In this project different methodologies were used as the project progress. In every main phase, different type of sources were used to acquire data. These main phases are literature analysis of m-commerce, analysis of characteristics of main markets, assessment of real world m-commerce examples and identification of differences and similarities among m-commerce markets In the literature analysis phase, several information source were analyzed to understand the m-commerce and differences between m-commerce and e-commerce; furthermore, these sources were used to identify main application areas of m-commerce. In this phase mainly academic papers were used as information source but also other types of sources were assessed to obtain information such as web sites and public reports. In analysis of markets phase, U.S, U.K, Germany, France and Japan were selected to be analyze because of their high potential in m-commerce sector and they were meticulously studied to obtain information about current situation of m-commerce market. Data obtained was used to create detailed diagrams and figures for each market. In this phase generally data was collected from business reports of successful research companies because they provide more up-to-date data than other sources of information. In third phase some successful m-commerce examples were given to demonstrate how a successful m-commerce application can increase overall customer satisfaction. In this phase some companies' web sites were carefully examined to find out most suitable ones and selected ones were given as an example. In final phase of this work, position of mobile commerce in all the markets were analyzed to reveal the differences and similarities among the markets; Furthermore, some estimations about future of m-commerce were presented to create deep understanding about m-commerce. The result of this works showed that even though m-commerce market is still small when it is compared with e-commerce, m-commerce has very promising future and it is expected to grow exponentially every years in developed markets. According to several researches, m-commerce generates only 1 percent of total e-commerce with 5 billion euro in U.S but until 2016, it is expected to generate 7 percent of total e-commerce market with 24 billion euro. The situation in Europe is very similar with U.S. In Europe m-commerce generates only 1 percent of total e-commerce with almost 2 billion euro but it is expected to generate 7 percent of total e- commerce market with 19 billion euro until 2017 similar to U.S. When we compare U.S and Europe with Japan, it can be easily realized that Japan has more mature m- commerce market than U.S and Europe. In Japan m-commerce generates almost 7 percent of e-commerce market with 10 billion euro but It has lower growth rate than U.S and Europe because of maturity of mobile market. When we look at the online sales per mobile user. Japan has highest average spending as expected. In Japan mobile consumers spent 326 euro in 2010 for mobile purchases. In U.S individual spending on mobile purchase is not as high as Japan but it is very promising. In U.S average spending per person is 233 euro. In Europe situation is a little bit complicated because there are huge gaps between countries' individual mobile spending. An average mobile consumer in Europe spent 125 euro in 2011 but when we look at countries by one by, we see that U.K had highest spending with 240 euro per person and it was followed by Germany and France and lowest mobile spending per user belongs to Italy with 28 euro. Results also show that mobile consumers generally prefer to buy similar products in major markets but there are some differences in priorities between countries. Clothing and jewelry, tickets, books and electronics stand out as most popular product categories. In this paper we first perform an literature review in order to gain deep understanding about mobile commerce. In this part we explain usage areas of m-commerce and advantages of m-commerce over e-commerce. In second part we first examine mobile phone infrastructure of major markets to understand readiness of countries for m-commerce and then we analyze situation of mobile commerce in each country. In third part we provide some example of successful mobile commerce activities to emphasize the importance of it. In final part we compare markets to understand mobile consumers' behaviors and trends.