An explorative study of salient usability attributes affecting m-commerce consumer behaviour in a Nordic context

Abstract

M-commerce, or mobile commerce, refers to smartphone shopping and plays an increasingly large role within e-commerce. Past research in the field of information systems (IS) success has primarily consisted of quantitative studies. Little research has been conducted in an m-commerce context. Furthermore, few qualitative works on the intersection of success factors from firms' perspective and m-commerce exist. In fact, there is a knowledge gap regarding how business practitioners can increase their website usability in an m-commerce setting. Based on the mapping of usability attributes by Kuan et al., which elaborates on DeLone and McLean's IS Success Model, this paper aims to identify the most important website usability attributes by generating new insights about mobile consumers' behaviour. This is obtained via a qualitative approach, using data about consumer behaviour on four Nordic m-commerce webshops within the baby products industry. Eight respondents completed a smartphone task while verbalising their thoughts. This data was supplemented with eye-tracking information. The theoretical model was operationalised via creating 19 codes corresponding to 19 usability attributes. As such, this paper took a deductive approach, coding the data in NVivo by tagging labels to categorical labels. Based on the number of references for each categorical label, three salient attributes were identified to increase m-commerce website usability: ‘ease of navigation’, ‘relevance’ and ‘effectiveness of product search and comparison’. The managerial implications include recommendations for these three attributes, including the use of categorisation and filtering systems, avoiding uncertainty and minimising the potential negative consequences related to the purchase intention and enabling on-page product and consumer product experience comparisons. While this study is based on a small data sample, and represents a minor exploration into a niche market, it nonetheless provides a starting point for business practitioners who have the goal of increasing usability in an m-commerce context.