Creating a Taxonomy for Mobile Commerce Innovations Using Social Network and Cluster Analyses

  • Authors:

  • Lara Khansa;Christopher Zobel;Guillermo Goicochea

  • Affiliations:

  • Department of Business Information Technology, Virginia Tech;Business Information Technology at Virginia Tech, University of Virginia;Ericsson, Atlanta, GA

  • Venue:
  • International Journal of Electronic Commerce
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

Increasing numbers of people are spending time focused on "the third screen" of a mobile device. Through ubiquitous connectivity, personalization, and affordability, such mobile devices have become much more than just entertainment handsets. In particular, e-commerce has harnessed the power of wireless computing to expand to mobile commerce (m-commerce), thus providing consumers with commercial services on the go. Because such services are often driven by customer input, it is important to consider the relevance of consumers to the development of new service offerings. We therefore dissect innovations in m-commerce by conducting a textual analysis of all filed m-commerce patent applications (over 2,300 in total). By using social network analysis and cluster analysis, we subsequently capture the focal innovation areas in m-commerce and develop a corresponding taxonomy of these innovations. The results clearly illustrate the importance of consumer empowerment and co-creation in the context of m-commerce innovations.