Consumer behaviour in the mobile telecommunications’ market: The individual’s adoption decision of innovative services Ioanna D. Constantiou Department of Informatics Copenhagen Business School Howitzvej 60, DK 2000 Frederiksberg Denmark Email:
[email protected]
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Consumer behaviour in the mobile telecommunications’ market: The individual’s adoption decision of innovative services Abstract Research in the adoption of innovative services in mobile communications markets has not offered a comprehensive explanation of how the individual makes a choice. This paper proposes a theoretical framework for the analysis of the adoption decision of innovative mobile services such as mobile TV. The decision to adopt the service can be viewed as a choice based on two cognitive processes of reasoning and referencing, as postulated in behavioural decision making. The framework has both theoretical and practical value. From a theoretical perspective, it illustrates the manner in which referencing and reasoning influence the individual’s decision to adopt innovative services in the mobile telecommunications market. From a practical perspective the framework offers a market analysis tool which can generate useful insights for the vendors.
Keywords: mobile communications, adoption decision, consumer behaviour, referencing, reasoning, mobile TV
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Introduction
The recent, impressive development of network technologies has led to the convergence of communications infrastructures (e.g. Internet, wireless networks etc.), which has enabled the creation of a common marketplace. Vendors, coming from different communications markets, have to compete for a market share in the new marketplace. In this marketplace “similar” services, in terms of use and value for the consumer, are available. Those services are perceived by the consumer as substitutes. For example, if a consumer watches an episode of TV series through Internet TV on his/her PC, this may decrease the use of cable, or mobile TV. Besides, new services enabled on a particular network infrastructure (e.g. IP telephony) have to compete with services available through a different, yet substitute infrastructure (e.g. fixed-line telephony). This dynamic market environment sets challenges for vendors’ profitability underlining the need to focus on consumer needs and preferences. The paper focuses on the innovative services offered in mobile telecommunications’ market. Examples of such services include content services offered from mobile portals and mobile TV services. Those services have been launched in the mobile communications’ market increasing
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the wide variety of options available to consumers. However, the demand for innovative services is not increasing but remains limited with low growth rates in Europe (Constantiou et al. 2006). This phenomenon is related to the individual’s decision to adopt the service. The decision to adopt is viewed as a process during which the individual makes a choice of a specific product or service. Research in the adoption of innovative services in mobile telecommunications markets has not offered a comprehensive explanation of the low demand observed in Europe. Two observations may shed some light on this conundrum. First, the adoption of most of the commercial mobile services available today is based on a voluntary decision of the individual. In contrast, most of the adoption theories derive from research in the organisational context where investments on information technologies are made by the management and the individual as an employee has to adopt them. In this situation the research focuses on the acceptance process of the specific innovation. Second, consumers of mobile communications’ markets have matured in terms of experiences and knowledge about available technologies, due to their exposure to many technological solutions during the last decade. Thus, the adoption criteria may have changed. The two observations imply that classical models focusing on the technology acceptance process (Venkatesh et al. 2003) and the decision to adopt by underlining the importance of the individual’s technical competences and the technology complexity (Rogers 2003) may not fully address the current market dynamics. In the current market consumers have to choose between service options of the same level of technical complexity which require comparable technical skills and are available in a particular context of use (e.g. different services may be available at home and at work). Then, the individual’s decision criteria are likely to be value-driven. This paper offers an alternative view on the research of adoption in mobile communications’ market. It presents a theoretical framework analysing the individual’s choice of innovative services. The individual’s choice has been the research focus of both scholars and practitioners in
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fields of microeconomics (e.g. Colell et al. 1995), marketing (e.g. Bettman et al. 1998) and behavioural decision theory (e.g. Kahneman and Tversky 1979). The framework draws on theoretical elements from behavioural decision theory to investigate how the individual chooses innovative services in the mobile communications’ market. Focusing on the individual’s cognitive processes, the framework illustrates the manner in which they influence the decision to adopt an innovative service. The theoretical elements of the framework are then explored in the case of mobile TV. This effort highlights both the theoretical and practical value of the framework. The research objective of this paper is to explore: •
How do the individual’s cognitive processes influence the decision to adopt innovative services such as mobile TV in mobile telecommunications’ market?
The contribution of this paper is two-fold. First, it expands the theoretical repertoire of the adoption research by introducing a theoretical framework based on behavioural decision theory as an alternative research approach. The framework focuses on the individual’s cognitive processes influencing the decision to adopt an innovative product or service in the case of technologically mature individuals. Second, it provides a practical tool, which can generate useful insights for the commercialisation strategies of the market players and may enable them to increase their market share in a highly competitive environment. The remainder of the paper focuses on the theoretical framework’s development and presentation. The next section briefly presents existing research on mobile services’ adoption. The following section presents the theoretical framework in the context of behavioural economics research and analyses the main processes involved. The framework is then used on a survey on mobile TV adoption, offering an example of its practical value. Finally, the paper highlights the framework’s contribution and concludes with future research directions.
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Research on the adoption of mobile services
The successful commercialisation of an innovation depends on the adoption decision of the market participants. In the field of information technologies the diffusion of innovation has been explored and analysed through models and theories postulating constructs, or factors affecting the individual’s adoption decision based on his/her expectations and attitudes (Venkatesh et al. 2003). Many academics applied these models and theories in mobile communications markets. They were seeking to interpret or predict future trends as well as to identify the drivers and the inhibitors in the adoption of innovative services, such as the mobile data services. In these research efforts, the consumer behaviour has been analyzed using conceptual frameworks inspired by the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) (Davis 1986) or the Diffusion of Innovation theory (DoI) (Rogers 2003). For example, Carlsson et al. (2007) applied a modified TAM model as an explanatory framework for mobile devices/services adoption. In addition, Lu et al. (2005) extended the TAM for Wireless Internet adoption by incorporating concepts such as social influences and personal traits. Similarly, Wu and Wang (2005) enriched TAM with constructs regarding perceived risk, cost, and compatibility, while Yang (2005) added individual characteristics, such as innovativeness, past adoption decisions, and knowledge about technology, as external antecedents of TAM constructs. Further, Kim et al. (2007) developed the value-based adoption model including benefits as well as sacrifices in the adoption process of mobile Internet, whereas Massey et al. (2005) identified technology readiness and wireless web sites interface usability as key factors influencing the uptake of mobile commerce and services. This indicative, though non-exhaustive, listing of research efforts underpins how the domain of mobile data services adoption and diffusion has acquired an important position within the research agenda of telecommunications industry.
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The research on external socio-economic factors affecting consumer behaviour towards mobile data services identified some main areas such as the acceptance of new technological solutions (e.g. GPRS enabled ones) (Hung et al. 2003), the pricing schemes and the brands (Turnbull and Leek 2000) as well as the mobile advertising (Oh and Xu 2003). The underlining assumption in this literature was the challenge faced by vendors to induce the individual to sample the service (Anckar and D'Incau 2002; Sarker and Wells 2003). In a marketing driven approach, these models predicted that once the service was sampled, the individual would eventually adopt it. However, this does not seem to be the case with some advanced mobile services (Blechar et al. 2006a; Blechar et al. 2006b), which despite the individuals’ trials have not been adopted. Overall, the past research has mainly focused on investigating the impact of several services’ attributes on the decision to adopt. Despite the growing line of publications of research on external influences to mobile data services’ adoption (see Constantiou et al. 2006 for a comprehensive review) the individual’s cognitive processes leading to the decision to adopt have not been explored in a comprehensive manner. The individual’s perceptions of service value, which are influenced by his/her behavioural characteristics and experiences (Constantiou et al. 2007), may affect the cognitive processes undertaken before the adoption decision. The research present in this paper contributes to the understanding of the individual’s cognitive processes involved in the adoption of innovative mobile services. The next section introduces the proposed theoretical framework.
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A theoretical framework for the individual’s choice of mobile TV
This section offers an introduction to the theoretical background of this research, the behavioural economics, and presents the theoretical framework. Then, the framework and the cognitive processes involved are described in relation to the empirical context of the mobile communications’ market.
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3.1
Research on the individual’s choice and the theoretical framework
In 1979 Kahneman and Tversky introduced Prospect Theory as an alternative to the Expected Utility Theory, which provided a descriptive model analysing decision making under risk. Expected Utility Theory has been the generally accepted normative model of rational choice which was used to analyse the economic behaviour. This model treats individual choice as a rational process of maximisation. It postulates some normative rules to describe the individual’s preferences in a manner which is systematically violated by the actual human behaviour (for a thorough review of practical examples of violations of the normative rules see Tversky & Kahneman, 1986). Kahneman and Tversky made the first systematic attempt to describe the human behaviour and the individual’s preferences as they are and not as they should be. They offered a model explaining individual’s attitudes towards uncertainty in relation to psychophysics of chance and value (1979). Since their seminal work, many researchers have applied the proposed model to different market settings such as the consumer markets where individuals make riskless choices (e.g.Thaler 1980) and have extended the main findings by introducing new elements (e.g. Kivetz 1999; Shafir et al. 1993). The research presented in this paper is motivated by Prospect Theory’s insights and their application to consumer behaviour. The adoption decision is a riskless choice which has a certain outcome (e.g. a service). In contrast, a risky choice is made without advance knowledge of the outcome of the choice because this depends on uncertain events (e.g. a gamble). Besides, the individual’s choice of a service, at a specific point in time, does not involve the risks related to aspects such as technological developments etc. The main focus of this research is on the psychophysics of value described by the value function. The value function defines the individual’s subjective evaluation of gains and losses compared to a “status quo” or an equilibrium point, which he/she has reached. The individual compares the subjective value of gains and losses incurred by the decision to adopt (i.e. move from the status
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quo) and if it is positive the purchase is made. This analysis has been developed by Thaler (1980) who introduced the mental accounting concept. Complementary to this perceptual approach is the accuracy-effort approach based on information processing theory proposed by Bettman et al (1998). According to this theory, the individual’s preferences are constructive. Except of the task characteristics and the aspects of choice, the individual’s ability to process information also affects the decision made. Different decision strategies might be used by the individual on the spot and according to the specific situation he/she is in. Reason-based choice (Shafir et al. 1993) is a representative theory of information processing approach. The theoretical framework presented in this paper brings together mental accounting (Thaler 1985) and reason-based choice (Shafir et al. 1993) in the analysis of the individual’s choice of innovative mobile services. In behavioural economics the two approaches have been used extensively, yet in an independent manner, as part of preferences’ construction and individual’s choice research (e.g. see Kahneman and Tversky 2003). The complementary nature of the two approaches was initially acknowledged by Shafir et al. (1993) who suggested that reasons were used as arguments along with value comparisons in the choice. Later on Kivetz (1999) offered some practical examples such as the price decoupling and the choice constraining as tasks of mental accounting where reason-based choice played an important role. However, the two different approaches have not been combined to explore the individual’s choice of innovative products or services in the consumer markets. The framework presented in this paper (see Figure 1) integrates the different theoretical elements and investigates their complementary nature in the analysis of the individual’s choice. This is achieved by depicting two cognitive processes deriving from the two approaches in order to explore how the individual makes a choice of innovative mobile services. In particular, the
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referencing process draws upon mental accounting (Thaler 1980) and the reasoning process derives from reason-based choice (Shafir et al. 1993). Referencing involves a comparative, alternative-based process and reasoning includes the lexicographic, attributes-based process (Bettman et al. 1998). The impact of the two cognitive processes in the individual’s decision is influenced by the external environment, where the choice is made. In the literature of preferences’ construction (e.g. Lichtenstein and Slovic 2006), researchers have examined the individual’s choice in relation to the external environment, or context. Context effects involve two broad categories, namely trade-off contrast and extremeness aversion (Simonson and Tversky 1992). The latter category refers to the individual’s assessment of available options of the same category of product (e.g. different mobile devices), depicting options with extreme values as less attractive than those with intermediate values of their attributes (Simonson 1989). For the purpose of this analysis the former effects of trade-off contrast are more applicable since they include comparisons between products/ services of different categories (e.g. Internet versus mobile TV enabled services) in various contexts of use (e.g. home versus working place with close substitutes available). These effects induce comparative evaluations between available options and it becomes difficult to attribute value to an individual option. These effects depend on background or local context. In turn, the background and local contexts affect the individual’s decision through reasoning, and/or referencing processes. The background context is related to the individual’s experiences and knowledge about products and services with similar characteristics. These experiences and knowledge contribute to the construction of preferences and the subjective evaluation of the new product/service’s attributes (e.g. price versus quality trade-off) (Simonson and Tversky 1992). Besides, the individual’s experiences from the trade-off between two attributes, such as price and quality, due to the use of substitute or similar services, affect the cognitive processes involved in the choice of the
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innovative service. For example, in the case of mobile TV, the individual’s experience with similar services such as Internet TV offered either for free and at a low quality of services, or for a flat price and good service quality, may set the background context. If mobile TV services are offered at a flat price, the service quality should be at least as good as the experience of individuals from the paid Internet TV services. The local context involves the context of use, such as the physical location and the availability of substitute products/services (Blechar et al. 2006b). For example, the availability of TV services at home through the Internet and other broadcasting means may defer mobile TV services use. The context of use may influence the cognitive processes involved in the choice. For example, in case of an emergency, the different prices of the available options for a voice call and their comparisons through referencing may be undermined in the decision process because the need for the service is more important than its cost. Consequently, a high price for the service may be accepted in the particular situation influenced by emergency.
Figure 1: The theoretical framework for innovative mobile services
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Having presented the theoretical framework, the next two sections present referencing and reasoning processes. Each process is described in relation to the background and the local context effects in mobile communications’ market.
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Referencing in the choice of innovative mobile services
Referencing process draws heavily on the mental accounting theory proposed by Thaler (1980). The services available to the individual form the “status quo” or the reference point at the decision to adopt a new service. When the individual assesses a potential purchase, he/she develops a cognitive account to compare the subjective value (perceived gains and losses) of the specific service in relation to the reference point (Thaler 1985). The individual will move from the equilibrium, the reference point and he/she will opt for the new service if there is a positive subjective value. It is important to note that it is the perceptions of the individual on the positive or the negative value of the different elements which affect the decision process and not the actual value. This implies that different consumers may perceive differently the value of the available options which in turn leads to different choices. The most important component of mental accounting (Thaler 1980) is the cost-benefit analysis undertaken in the subjective evaluation of available options. This evaluation is measured by transaction utility which quantifies the perceived value of a purchase based on a comparison between the actual price of the new service and the reference price of the service constituting the status quo (Briesch et al. 1997; Kalyanaram and Winer 1995; Niedrich et al. 2001). The background effects influence this task. In particular, the reference price is defined by information and/or experiences from similar services to the available option. Then, transaction utility is calculated by subtracting from the reference price the option’s actual price (Winer 1986). In practical terms, if transaction utility is positive the individual decides to purchase the service and vice versa.
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Moreover, the individual is subject to loss aversion during the decision process, which implies that perceived losses have a greater impact than gains on the subjective evaluation (Kahneman and Tversky 1979). An implication of loss aversion is that the individual has a strong tendency to remain at the equilibrium situation, before choice, the “status quo”, since the disadvantages of leaving it loom larger than the advantages (Samuelson and Zeckhauser 1988). This tendency is affected by the background context and leads to the “status quo” bias, which also underlines switching costs for the individual (Kahneman et al. 1991). Mobile TV services may be evaluated in terms of the performance (price, or service quality) using as a reference the Internet experience which forms the “status quo” (Blechar et al. 2006b). In turn this may decrease the probability of choice. However, in a specific context of use where the Internet access is not available, the individual may choose the mobile TV since the “status quo” bias does not influence the referencing process. Further, the individual’s control of expenditures may decrease the probability of adoption. It is assumed that the individual has a monthly income which is allocated into different budgets, labelled according to specific needs and preferences. Heath and Soll (1996) suggested that mental budgeting might decrease the consumption of products and services when expenditure within a specific budget reaches the limits. In the case of mobile TV is important to investigate individual’s budgeting of such expenses and the flexibility in terms of the amount of money allocated.
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Reasoning in the choice of innovative mobile services
Reasoning process draws heavily on the reason-based choice developed by Shafir et al. (1993). The individual may experience difficulties to make a choice because of the information overload, or the lack of knowledge/expertise to assess the information, or in case many options are available. These situations may occur due to local context effects (Tversky and Kahneman 1986). In such cases choosing between the available options may produce conflict to the individual
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(Hsee 1996) and the comparisons between the values of services’ attributes through referencing may not be an easy task. Then, the individual may focus on the reasoning process to make a choice (Shafir et al. 1993). The individual focuses on reasons, which derive from the service’s dimensions such as the attributes or the features (Simonson and Tversky 1992). The service attributes may loom larger than available service options when they can be used as reasons to support a particular choice (Kivetz 1999). The individual invokes a salient and simple reason to facilitate or motivate the adoption decision. By linking a salient reason to a particular service attribute, the individual avoids the cognitively demanding evaluations and focuses on the dimension ease to justify to him/herself or to the others. According to this theory the individual compares the available options on a single dimension which is the most important, or the prominent (Slovic 1991; Tversky et al. 1988) and chooses the one with the optimal (highest or lowest) value. Moreover, the individual may evaluate separately or jointly the available options. In the case of separate evaluation, he/she seeks the easy to understand, or the ‘simple’ attribute of a service (Hsee 1996) which becomes the reason for making a choice (e.g. design, simple functionality, etc). In the case of join evaluation, and since most of the services have more than one dimension the individual has to deal with trade-offs. The individual may focus on the more complicated dimension since a comparison can be made (Hsee 1996). The trade-offs between the service’s dimensions are assessed based on the previous experiences of the individual derived from the background context (Shafir et al. 1993; Simonson and Tversky 1992). These experiences may offer information about the neutral reference point, or the best and the worst possible values of the attributes (Hsee et al. 1999). In turn the individual’s positive assessment of the service attributes on the trade-off may increase the probability of choice.
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Previous research on the adoption in mobile market has pointed to the key attributes of mobile services deemed to influence individual’s choice. Those are the content-device fit and the personalisation (Constantiou et al. 2006). Depending on the context of use the individual may compare the new service’s dimensions with the PC experiences. This process may be used in a joint evaluation mode, if both devices are available. Alternatively, if the context of use does not include any other devices than the mobile one the individual will perform a single evaluation task. He/she may focus on the easy to assess and value generating attribute of the mobile service such as the accessibility to specific information. Further, some vendors add new attributes, or features on the mobile services offerings which might not be perceived as value generating by the consumers. Individuals do not appreciate adding service dimensions which are not perceived as useful since they complicate the reasoning process (Shafir et al. 1993). According to Simonson et al. (1994) when consumers do not have strong preferences for the available options, adding a new feature may defer choice. The individual may infer negative value of the service offering when adding unneeded features. Moreover, he/she may infer hidden cost in adding extra services. These features increase difficulty of justification of the choice to him/herself or others. For example, research on mobile users’ perceptions of new features and services available on the mobile devices indicated that instant messaging and embedded games did not attract users’ interest and were the most negatively evaluated ones (Constantiou et al. 2007). Thus, their inclusion into mobile service offerings may defer choice. Having depicted the proposed theoretical framework and analysed its components the next section presents a survey instrument developed to explore the framework’s applicability in the mobile communications market, which focuses on the decision to adopt mobile TV services.
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Research Approach
Mobile TV adoption and market readiness is explored in Denmark, which is among the most advanced European countries in mobile communications. Denmark maintained the top ranking of e-readiness, a measure developed by the Economist Intelligence Unit in an international study from 2005 to 2007 (2008). This measure includes, among others, connectivity, which measures the access of individuals and companies to fixed and mobile telephony, personal computers and the Internet (Economist Intelligence Unit 2008). This technologically advanced environment with technologically mature consumers has enabled the shaping of a dynamic mobile communications market, which is one of the most progressive in terms of liberalization and displays high mobile penetration rates (NITTA 2007). A survey instrument was developed to explore the theoretical framework’s applicability in the decision to adopt mobile TV. The respondents perceptions of the various elements of the theoretical framework were measured through seven point Likert scales (i.e. 1: not interesting/ totally disagree to 7: very interesting/ fully agree). The survey instrument also included questions about respondents’ technical expertise, innovativeness, demographics as well as specific questions for the users of mobile TV. It was developed in English and included 40 questions. It was pre-tested by graduate students (20) participating in a course of consumer behaviour and Information Technologies, with knowledge on both the theoretical domain and the application field. Based on their feedback the survey instrument was revised. The survey was administered using the Internet in a class of 70 students. Mobile TV services have been recently introduced in the Danish market. However, respondents were aware of the service offerings through a brief introduction to the different content categories available through mobile TV. Convenience sampling was used since the objective of the study was to explore the relationships between the variables of the theoretical framework rather than to accurately estimate the population values (Cozby 2007). A Survey provides a methodology for asking people about
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themselves and it offers a “snapshot” of how people think and behave at a specific point in time (pp.124 Cozby 2007). The framework’s elements were explored through a set of questions focusing on different components. The referencing process was explored through 8 questions. The reference price was investigated in relation to mobile services expenditures (3 questions) and expenditure on cable TV at home (1 question). Internet expenditure was not measured since in Denmark students of some universities have free Internet access at home (Constantiou and Kautz 2008). The preferred pricing scheme and the introductory services offerings (2 questions) for mobile TV were also explored. The mental budgeting was explored by asking the respondents which monthly category of expenditure would be willing to reduce to pay for mobile TV (1 question). Finally, the willingness to pay for mobile TV use, monthly, was used as a proxy of the transaction utility and the referencing outcome (1 question). Two groups were depicted; those not willing to pay any amount of money and those willing to pay a specific amount of money. The first group indicated a negative influence of the referencing process on the decision to adopt mobile TV while the second group indicated a positive influence respectively. The reasoning process was explored through 3 questions including different types of reasons. The first question included content categories (10 items; music videos, sports, news, cartoons, weather forecasts, soaps, movies, lifestyle magazines, interactive programmes and documentaries), the second question included value generating attributes of mobile TV (8 items; see Table 1) and the third question included technical and practical challenges (11 items; reception signal, audiovideo quality, small screen, service’s technical complexity, content customisation, distraction, privacy, security issues, health concerns, missing calls and unwanted advertisements). These items (Knoche and McCarthy 2005; Knoche et al. 2005; Knoche et al. 2008; Orgad 2006) might
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constitute positive or negative reasons affecting the reasoning process. The reasoning outcome was measured based on the respondents’ aggregate valuations of the content categories, which was used as a proxy. The measure was calculated from the mean of each respondent’s scores on the content categories. The respondents were then separated into two groups; those with high scores (i.e. mean >4.00) and those with low scores (i.e. mean< 4.00). The respondents with positive evaluation (i.e. high scores) indicated a positive influence of the reasoning process on the decision to adopt mobile TV, where as those with neutral or negative evaluation (i.e. low scores) indicated a potential choice deferral or a negative influence respectively. The background context was explored in relation to the experiences from three comparable services categories (in content or information terms); the mobile communications, the Internet and the broadcasting TV ones, through 11 questions. The mobile communications services and products’ influences were explored through 5 questions about the mobile device’ use (years of use, current device), the advanced data services’ use (types of services) and the experiences (perceptions of usefulness and future use). The Internet services’ influences were explored by 4 questions about the Internet TV (use and frequency of use) and related services (Internet access devices and Internet services’ use) (Blechar et al. 2006a; Blechar et al. 2006b). The broadcasting TV services use at home was explored by 2 questions (purpose of use, time spent daily) (Orgad 2006). The local context was explored through 4 questions about the Internet access in different physical locations, the time spent in activities such as queuing, breaks, transportation, where mobile TV could be a complementary activity (Orgad 2006), the respondent’s current activities during this time slots, as well as the locations or situations in which respondents would be willing to watch mobile TV (Orgad 2006). Measuring local context through respondents’ chosen areas/situations of mobile TV service may be subject to instabilities related to the individual’s preferences. However, due to the current, early, market state, respondents were not adopters of the services
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and could not indicate the situations or places of actual use. Thus, actual situations and locations of use were approximated by those suggested by the respondents. Choice was explored by asking respondents about their adoption intentions (4 items), following the operationalisation of the variable used in the adoption theories (e.g. Venkatesh et al. 2003). The next section presents the survey findings by focusing on the framework’s applicability in the investigation of the individual’s adoption decision of innovative services such as mobile TV.
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Applying the theoretical framework in the decision to adopt mobile TV
The sample comprised 59 usable respondents. Respondents were mainly female (74%), students, which were working part time along the undergraduate studies (58%). The average age of the respondents was 23 years and they claimed an average monthly income of 1200 Euros after tax. In terms of the self-assessment of innovativeness among peers, low scores were observed in line with previous observations in mobile communications markets’ research suggesting that females did not have an innovative profile (Constantiou et al. 2007). However, high scores were observed in relation to perceived ease of use of mobile devices. The respondents were representative of Danish mobile telephony and Internet users with technical expertise and maturity, as identified in other adoption studies (e.g. Constantiou and Kautz 2008). The small number of observations led to a descriptive analysis focusing on the identification of significant relationships between the theoretical framework’s elements. The section is divided into four parts describing the relationships between the different theoretical elements.
5.1
Local and background contexts’ interrelations
The mobile users’ experiences with similar or substitute services to mobile TV may work for, or against the local context effects. The respondents’ experiences with advanced mobile services
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such mobile email, music clips or video downloads in the mobile device were limited. The most frequently used service was multimedia messaging. Besides the majority of respondents used mobile devices for more than 6 years (73%) and the current devices were less than two years old (85%). Respondents were asked about their perceptions of advanced mobile data services’ usefulness (mean=4.74) and future use (mean=4.79), which were found positive. Both measures indicated positive experiences in terms of usefulness and value which leads to future use. Further, the absolute majority of respondents (98%) owned a laptop with Internet access. The majority of respondents (61%) claimed watching Internet TV for 12 minutes daily and 68 minutes weekly, on the average. Finally, the main reasons for watching TV at home were entertainment (49%) and relaxation (25%). From the background context the main effects related to the positive experiences from advanced mobile data services and the use of Internet TV. Turning to local context, the presence of Internet access at all the physical locations, where respondents spent most of their time daily (i.e. home, university, work) challenged mobile TV use. Respondents were asked to estimate the time spent in activities such as public transportation, breaks, queues and idle time, where mobile TV might be used. The Internet TV users estimated significantly higher (p
