Mobile Commerce System Research Articles

Mobile E-commerce model based on social network analysis

With the development of Internet technology and the increasing popularity of mobile terminals, mobile E-commerce has become a convenient tool in our daily life. In a mobile E-commerce system, how to effectively establish and evaluate trust between seller and buyer is a hotspot. Whether a buyer knows and trusts a seller often strongly influences purchasing decisions, especially in customer-to-customer (C2C) E-commerce or second-hand exchange market. This paper proposes a social network model on the mobile E-commerce system, which can give recommendation values between buyers and sellers in terms of their social relationship, actual geographical distances and historic deal records etc. Experiment results show that the proposed model can effectively help users to make the decision whether and with whom to make a deal by using the recommendation values. In addition, the proposed model also has better security feature than the normal E-commerce system.

Universal framework of secure mobile payment system in mobile computing environments

It is believed that Mobile Agents play an important role in future mobile e-commerce system,offering great flexibility and improved performance.However,it is largely hampered by the new security issues.Based on mobile Agents and the model of SEMOPS,this paper combined the existing mobile payment protocol and presented a universal framework of security mobile payment system in Mobile Computing Environments with abstracting several common operation modules of payment system.

Business-to-Consumer Mobile Agent-Based Internet Commerce System (MAGICS)

We present MAGICS, a mobile agent-based system for supporting business-to-consumer electronic commerce (e-commerce) or mobile commerce (m-commerce) applications. To use the system, consumers first provide their buying requirements to a proxy/agent server through a Web browser or a wireless application protocol (WAP) terminal. Having obtained the requirements, mobile agents are generated to carry out tasks for the consumers including getting offers from merchants, evaluating offers, and even completing purchases. In the case of mobile commerce, consumers can generate a mobile agent to conduct a search and evaluation in the digital marketspace before making a purchase in the physical marketplace. To make it possible to choose an offer that best satisfies the consumer's requirement(s), we present a mathematical model for evaluating multiple decision factors. To test the basic functions of the mobile agent-based Internet commerce system (MAGICS), we have built a prototype system. To minimize the average cost of a product (including the cost of sending agents), we have also developed an analytical model that can determine how many agents should be sent to compare prices. Four different price distributions and some real price information are analyzed based on the model. The analysis provides valuable insights into the design of mobile agent-based shopping applications for m-commerce, in particular, and for e-commerce, in general.

Mining Mobile Sequential Patterns in a Mobile Commerce Environment

In this paper, we explore a new data mining capability for a mobile commerce environment. To better reflect the customer usage patterns in the mobile commerce environment, we propose an innovative mining model, called mining mobile sequential patterns, which takes both the moving patterns and purchase patterns of customers into consideration. How to strike a compromise among the use of various knowledge to solve the mining on mobile sequential patterns is a challenging issue. We devise three algorithms (algorithm TJ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LS</sub> , algorithm TJ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PT</sub> , and algorithm TJ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PF</sub> ) for determining the frequent sequential patterns, which are termed large sequential patterns in this paper, from the mobile transaction sequences. Algorithm TJ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">LS</sub> is devised in light of the concept of association rules and is used as the basic scheme. Algorithm TJ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PT</sub> is devised by taking both the concepts of association rules and path traversal patterns into consideration and gains performance improvement by path trimming. Algorithm TJ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PF</sub> is devised by utilizing the pattern family technique which is developed to exploit the relationship between moving and purchase behaviors, and thus is able to generate the large sequential patterns very efficiently. A simulation model for the mobile commerce environment is developed, and a synthetic workload is generated for performance studies. In mining mobile sequential patterns, it is shown by our experimental results that algorithm TJ <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">PF</sub> significantly outperforms others in both execution efficiency and memory saving, indicating the usefulness of the pattern family technique devised in this paper. It is shown by our results that by taking both moving and purchase patterns into consideration, one can have a better model for a mobile commerce system and is thus able to exploit the intrinsic relationship between these two important factors for the efficient mining of mobile sequential patterns

A virtual electronic trading system for business‐to‐business e‐commerce

PurposeUntil recently, only large companies could afford to develop and maintain computer systems to automate their trading processes. These ad hoc solutions are expensive and preclude widespread applications because they often address specific issues. This paper addresses some of these issues by proposing a business‐to‐business (b2b) electronic trading framework known as virtual electronic trading (VET).Design/methodology/approachWith personal computers and the internet, it is now possible to realize a generic electronic infrastructure for virtual trading. A modular approach has been adopted in the development of VET to ensure a high degree of flexibility, scalability, maintainability and upgradeability. Overall, the design goal is to make sure that the system performs effectively and reliably.FindingsA survey of existing b2b electronic trading systems has been conducted. Key attributes of these systems and areas of improvements are highlighted. These form the basis of VET.Research limitations/implicationsThe VET framework forms the basis for further research. Two examples are highlighted, namely: application of intelligent agents to perform the of market‐maker task; and development into a mobile commerce system when mobile technology and infrastructure can support such services.Practical implicationsAn important contribution of our work is that the VET system provides a generic framework for a variety of business models and practices. Owing to the modular design, it can be easily customized to suit different (specialized) trading communities.Originality/valueIt is a systematic approach in developing a b2b e‐trading system that addresses users' needs by applying the most up‐to‐date computing and internetworking technology.

A functional-dependencies-based Bayesian networks learning method and its application in a mobile commerce system

This paper presents a new method for learning Bayesian networks from functional dependencies (FD) and third normal form (3NF) tables in relational databases. The method sets up a linkage between the theory of relational databases and probabilistic reasoning models, which is interesting and useful especially when data are incomplete and inaccurate. The effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method is demonstrated by its implementation in a mobile commerce system.

An empirical study of mobile commerce in insurance industry: Task–technology fit and individual differences

Mobile commerce, generally defined as conducting information inquiries and/or business transactions by using mobile devices via wireless communications, is considered the next big wave of investment and application of information technology. Mobile commerce is estimated to account for a sizable portion of the US$6.9 trillion e-commerce revenue by 2004. Although abundant research on the technology side of mobile commerce has been published, there exists “very limited research on the strategies and applications of M-commerce” [A. Gunasekaran, E. Ngai, Call for papers: special issue on mobile commerce: strategies, technologies, and applications, Decision Support Systems 35 (2003) 187–188. [15]]. We propose and validate a modified task–technology fit model to explore the factors affecting the effective adoption of mobile commerce in the insurance industry. In particular, we study: (1) if the mobile commerce system based on personal digital assistant (PDA) technology is applicable for the insurance industry; (2) whether individual differences will impact the cognitive fit of insurance agents' use of PDA mobile commerce system; (3) which of the three major insurance tasks is better suited for the PDA technology; and (4) which PDA technology characteristic is best for which type of insurance tasks. Our research finds that the PDA mobile commerce system is indeed suitable for the insurance industry. In terms of the impact of individual differences, we discover that position experience, cognitive style, and computer self-efficacy are major factors that can predict the fit of applying PDA technology for insurance tasks. Counter conventional wisdom, other demographic variables such as gender and age are found to be non-significant. Among three major insurance tasks, we find that the PDA mobile technology provides the highest level of assistance in post-contract customer services, followed by recruiting new insurance contracts, and tax and legal information services.

Internet-Enabled Mobile Handheld Devices for Mobile Commerce

The emergence of wireless and mobile networks has made possible the introduction of electronic commerce to a new application and research area: mobile commerce. Internet-enabled mobile handheld devices are one of the core components of a mobile commerce system, making it possible for mobile users to directly interact with mobile commerce applications. Much of a mobile user’s first impression of the application will be formed by his or her interaction with the device, therefore the success of mobile commerce applications is greatly dependent on how easy they are to use. This article first explains the role of handheld devices in mobile commerce systems and then discusses the devices in detail. A mobile handheld device includes six major components: i) a mobile operating system, ii) a mobile central processor unit, iii) a microbrowser, iv) input/output devices, v) a memory, and vi) batteries. Each component is described in detail and major products and technologies for the component are given. The technology needed for synchronization with desktop PCs and various mobile commerce applications is also presented.

EJB기반 모바일 전자상거래 컴포넌트의 설계 및 구현

컴포넌트 기술은 재사용성을 기반으로 어플리케이션 개발의 생산성을 높일 수 있어 소프트웨어를 신속하고 효과적으로 개발할 수 있는 기술로써 채택되고 있으며, 이들 중 EJB 컴포넌트는 자바를 기반으로 하며 산업계에서 널리 이용되고 있는 기술이다. 본 논문에서는 모바일 전자상거래 시스템의 구성 요소중 게시판과 쇼핑몰을 EJB 컴포넌트로 설계, 구현함으로써 재사용성과 상호운용성을 지원하는 구축 방안을 제시하였다. Since component-based development technologies support reusability and enhance productivity of application development, they are adopted for rapid and efficient software development, and among them, EJB component is a Jana-based software development technology widely used in industry. In this paper, we designed and implemented bulletin board and shopping mall which are major constituents of mobile e-commerce system using EJB components, and suggest construction guideline supporting reusability and interoperability.