Effects of mobile networks and Covid-19 on mobile shopping sales in South Korea

Covid-19 has driven us abruptly to a new world of contactless society. It also compelled us to use online shopping, especially mobile shopping in South Korea, where the dominant mode of wireless communication was already 4G services when Covid-19 broke out. This paper examines the different roles of mobile networks and the Covid-19 pandemic in transforming mobile shopping submarkets in South Korea by estimating the long-term and short-term effects of these two factors on mobile shopping sales. We used a cointegration and an error correction model to estimate long-term and short-term effects separately. This paper finds that Covid-19 was a major short-term factor affecting sales in mobile shopping submarkets, while mobile network subscribers were a key long-term driving factor of mobile shopping sales growth.     

Incumbency and market share within European mobile telecommunication networks

The structure of mobile telecommunication markets varies considerably across Europe, ranging from monopolies with a handful of subscribers to markets with five operators and many millions of subscribers. Where competitive markets occur, there is also an incumbent operator possessing substantial first mover advantages. This paper explores these advantages, asking whether the incumbent has remained the largest operator as the market has developed. This question is investigated using data from 49 European countries. The analysis finds that in most countries the incumbent continues to be the largest operator measured by market share. In some countries, later entrants into the market have struggled to gain market share, contributing to the highly concentrated nature of many mobile markets. The extent to which the geographical footprint of an operator influences its market share is also examined.     

Entering the mobile service market via mobile platforms: Qualcomm's BREW platform and Nokia's Preminet platform

The mobile telecommunication market has evolved from simple voice to multimedia services. In the past, the primary players in mobile services were local operators in different countries; international telecommunication vendors, such as Qualcomm and Nokia, were seldom involved in the mobile service market. In order to enter this market, Qualcomm and Nokia have separately introduced their mobile application platforms, called respectively BREW and Preminet. This paper examines how the two companies attempt to share the mobile service market through their mobile platforms and internationalized business models. This paper also analyzes their mobile platforms’ business models and their strategic implications.     

Regulation and competition in the European mobile communications industry: An examination of the implementation of mobile number portability

Over the past two decades, the mobile communications industry has seen a considerable drop in the consumer switching charges made by service providers in order to promote effective competition and ensure a level playing field for new market entrants. Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is an important regulatory measure taken to reduce switching costs, and it is believed to play an important role in fostering competition in the mobile market. MNP implementation has varied significantly across European Union countries, particularly with respect to porting time and customer fees, both of which are important factors when deciding whether to switch to another provider. The research examines the effects of MNP implementation on competition in the European mobile communications industry. The study findings indicate that subscriber churn rates are negatively affected by both the level of charges levied on subscribers wishing to maintain their current number (porting) when switching mobile providers and the length of time required to switch. The implications of the effectiveness of MNP regulation for competition in the mobile communications industry are discussed.     

Effective competition and ineffective mobile industry regulation in South Africa

The most striking feature of South Africa’s mobile market is the skewed allocation of spectrum and a seemingly endless sequence of failed attempts to hold an auction for it. A shortage of spectrum (or the inefficient assignment of it) is blamed, among other things, for South Africa’s relatively slow LTE 4G speeds. Through historical accident, the country has two mobile data networks in addition to the four licensed mobile operators. The response of operators has been to innovate using roaming and network sharing agreements; as we explore in this paper, these have become the de facto spectrum allocation process.This paper looks at how the de facto industry structure has been moulded by spectrum holdings and sharing arrangements and asks how spectrum management could be improved. We observe that, although the number of mobile operators has effectively been reduced to 3 (a number which would raise concern in some circles), there exist a variety of arrangements between those three and other spectrum and network operators. The smallest of the current three mobile operators is still not able to offer a nationwide mobile service without a roaming agreement but, at the same time, the two larger operators depend critically on spectrum and roaming agreements themselves, mainly with the two physical data network operators that function as wholesale providers.The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (ICASA) was established as a consequence of a new constitution that was adopted in 1996 and it helped to create new institutional arrangements for the burgeoning mobile industry. The authority has nevertheless continued to be hampered, as we shall demonstrate, by political imperatives. This has been pointed out by other authors over the past twenty years and we add to this body of evidence by considering the spectrum auction planned (again) for 2021.The “2021” auction is in fact an iteration of the auction originally announced in May 2010 and then abandoned (Song, 2011). The same thing happened again in 2016 (Paelo & Robb, 2020). Late in 2020, the regulator again announced an auction, due to take place during 2021 but by the second quarter of the year, two of the four national operators had already obtained a court injunction to stop it. The process is intertwined with a political imperative to establish a public wireless open-access network, which we discuss in detail.We describe how the industry has navigated around policy and regulatory dysfunction and how competitive interaction among the South African operators has managed to prevail. Following Hausman & Taylor’s (2013) lead in their work on the United States, in this paper we provide a commentary on apparently perverse outcomes from significant regulatory, judicial and legislative actions (or, perhaps more accurately, inactions) governing the South African mobile telecommunications industry from the commencement of the current constitutional arrangements in 1996 to the present.     

The evolution of mobile communications in Europe: The transition from the second to the third generation

This paper analyses the evolution of the mobile communications industry in the European Union. The research focuses its interest on the different roles played by the regulator in Europe and in other regions of the world (mainly the US). The diffusion of GSM was extraordinarily fast in Europe, mainly due to the adoption of a unified standard from inception. This rapid diffusion has resulted in an important competitive advantage for European operators. Interestingly, while the regulator acted similarly in the case of UMTS, the development of the latter has faced many problems and, presently, its diffusion is still low (about 5% in the EU). The paper also offers basic information on market structure that may be useful for extracting some preliminary conclusions about the degree of rivalry within the industry and the differences that can be observed between European countries.     

The diffusion of mobile data services and applications: Exploring the role of habit and its antecedents

Given the prevalence of mobile data services and applications (MDSA) such as App Store, it is important to diffuse MDSA and understand user behavior toward it. Recent research on marketing and information systems (IS) has shed light on the habitual use of frequently used IS. This study attempts to develop a research model that clarifies the role of habit in the actual use of MDSA. Considering the unique and specific characteristics of MDSA, this study examines the antecedents of MDSA habit in an effort to elucidate key factors accelerating the development of MDSA habitual use. Data collected from 317 users who had prior experiences with MDSA were empirically tested against the research model using partial least squares (PLS). The analysis results indicate that both continuance intention and habit play an important role in the actual use of MDSA. Moreover, the findings reveal that habit is a more prevalent predictor of actual use compared to conscious intention. It was found that user satisfaction, perceived monetary value, and variety of use serve as the antecedents of MDSA habit. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings are described.     

Impacts of mobile Internet use intensity on the demand for SMS and voice services of mobile network operators: An empirical multi-method study of German mobile Internet customers

Scholarly and business publications alike convey the message that past and future strong growth in mobile Internet (MI) access and service demand has solely positive commercial implications for mobile network operators (MNOs). This position neglects the possibility that increasing MI use intensity may lead to demand decreases for the highly profitable short messaging service (SMS) and mobile voice telephony. The extant literature provides few insights on relations between MI use intensity, on the one hand, and SMS as well as mobile voice call use intensities, on the other hand. This study developed hypotheses concerning the presence or absence of impacts of MI use intensity and circumstances of MI use (e.g., device type, tariff scheme) on the demand for SMS and mobile voice telephony at the individual customer level. The hypotheses were tested by analyzing actual use behaviors of 304 MI adopters in Germany, for whom objective use intensity data were extracted from the billing system of an MNO. These non-reactive measures were combined with responses collected from the adopters through a telephone survey. Multivariate regression results suggest that though MI use intensity significantly negatively affected both number of SMS sent and received, these effects were so small that their practical relevance is highly doubtful. Further, customers who used MI more intensively did not generate lower volumes of outgoing or incoming mobile voice connection minutes. Conclusions are drawn for MNO, telecommunications sector regulators and scholarly researchers seeking to explain the acceptance of mobile communications services.     

Expanding mobile wireless capacity: The challenges presented by technology and economics

As demand for mobile broadband services continues to explode, mobile wireless networks must expand greatly their capacities. This paper describes and quantifies the economic and technical challenges associated with deepening wireless networks to meet this growing demand. Methods of capacity expansion divide into three general categories: the deployment of more radio spectrum; more intensive geographic reuse of spectrum; and increasing the throughput capacity of each MHz of spectrum within a given geographic area. The paper describes these several basic methods to deepen mobile wireless capacity. It goes on to measure the contribution of each of these methods to historical capacity growth within U.S. networks. The paper then describes the capabilities of 4G LTE wireless technology, and further innovations off of it, to further improve network capacity. These capacity expansion capabilities of LTE-Advanced along with traditional spectrum reuse are quantified and compared to forecasts of future demand to evaluate the ability of U.S. networks to match future demand. Without significantly increasing current spectrum allocations by 560 MHz over the 2014–2022 period, the presented model suggests that U.S. wireless capacity expansion will be inadequate to accommodate expected demand growth. This conclusion is in contrast to claims that the U.S. faces no spectrum shortage.     

Internationalisation in the telecommunications services industry: Literature review and research agenda

A review of 356 publications addressing internationalisation aspects of the telecommunications services industry (TSI) shows a growing body of contributions, mainly covering research themes like settlement and regulation policy, strategic alliances and incumbents’ reactions to deregulation as well as opening of markets in-depth until recently. Wireline telephony TSI has been the dominant segment in most contributions, while the mobile or broadband Internet segments only featured in more recent work. Segment characteristics like non-uniform barriers to entry, different reasons for alliances and non-uniform levels of internationalisation differentiate these TSI segments pose a number of additional questions concerning telecom firms’ internationalisation strategy and success promising for future research.     

Competition in Turkish mobile telecommunications markets: Price elasticities and network substitution

This paper estimates demand elasticities for Turkish mobile telecommunications markets. In contrast to most other studies, firm-level data is used to estimate dynamic panel data models including instrumental variable techniques. Both short- and long-run elasticities are calculated, yielding a long-run price elasticity of −0.72 for the post-paid market and of −0.33 for the pre-paid market. The short-run price elasticity is estimated to be −0.36 for the post-paid market and −0.20 for the pre-paid market. In addition, there is evidence of fixed-to-mobile traffic substitution for consumers who use pre-paid cards.     

Circulation of loyalty: Relationships between mobile instant messenger and offline character emoticon store

Mobile instant messenger (mIM) service providers are extending their online services to the offline platform. Asia's largest mIM service providers, LINE and Kakao, are brining life to its signature characters such that they appear not only on the text screen but also on offline character flagship stores. This study investigates mIM users' motives in visiting the store and identifies the role of mIM characters in facilitating users' loyalty toward the mIM service provider. To comprehensively understand users' motivations in visiting the offline flagship store, the study conducted a focus group interview and used the confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) to identify seven key motivations. The empirical findings are drawn from 332 Korean respondents that use the mIM service and have experience in visiting the character flagship store. The study finds that users who actively use mIM services and emoticons are likely to visit the store due to the identified factors. A virtuous cycle of loyalty from online to the offline platform, and vice versa was also found. Findings of this study confirm that mIM character flagship stores are a strategic way for mIM service providers to communicate with users and create their unique brand identity.     

Diffusion and competitive relationship of mobile telephone service in Guatemala: An empirical analysis

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the characteristics of diffusion process of mobile telephone service and the competitive relationships between mobile and fixed-line services in Guatemalan telecommunications market. We investigated the best-suited model to explain the diffusion process of mobile telephone in Guatemala by estimating diffusion curves using empirical data. Moreover, we explored affecting factors which characterize the diffusion pattern of mobile telephony in Guatemala through statistical analysis. Finally, in order to understand the effects of competition in the diffusion process of Guatemalan mobile phone service, we attempted to clarify the competitive relationship between mobile and fixed-line services using the Lotka-Volterra model. As a result, the logistic model was found to be the best model for describing the diffusion pattern. Moreover, investment in telecommunications, the subscribers of fixed-line services, and the number of operators in mobile market were found as significant determinants of mobile diffusion process. Results from the Lotka-Volterra model showed that the relationship between mobile and fixed-line services has changed from pure competition to amensalism.     

Moving from basic offerings to value-added solutions: Strategies, barriers and alignment

Commoditization erodes the competitive differentiation of companies and often leads to a profit squeeze. Existing literature recommends the transition from basic product offerings to service-based value concepts in order to regain competitiveness in such a context. This paper explores the concrete efforts of suppliers in the commoditized electro-technical industry to create new non-price-based customer value. In this paper, a taxonomy of efforts is developed which builds on the competitive strategy and strategic marketing literature. Our research identifies barriers to the market introduction of these new value concepts. Observations in this industry lead to a framework that (1) proposes alternative step-by-step strategies for making the transition from basic products to service-based solutions, and (2) offers alignment suggestions for overcoming identified barriers. Migration paths to introducing new service-based value concepts are incremental rather than radical, and managers should complement their market approach with (a) value chain actions to create multilevel industry support and (b) an organizational alignment approach.     

Financial inclusion,mobile money,and individual welfare: The case of Burkina Faso

Access to financial services promotes investment and facilitates consumption smoothing by enhancing resource mobilization. Over 60 percent of Burkinabe adults are excluded from financial services by banks and other nonbank financial institutions, so mobile money is expected to bridge this gap. Accounting for the importance of financial inclusion with the rapid prevalence of mobile money, this paper assesses the effects of financial inclusion and mobile money use on an individual's nonmonetary welfare in Burkina Faso by applying matching methods. The results confirm the significant role of financial inclusion in alleviating poverty. More importantly, our analysis shows that once individuals access financial services through mobile money, such favorable effects on poverty alleviation become more substantial. Financial regulators in Burkina Faso should promote financial inclusion with mobile money to ensure the efficient enhancement of individual welfare with poverty reduction.     

Development and implementation of customer solutions: A study of process dynamics and market shaping

A broad, dynamic network perspective on solution processes remains scarce. This article presents the process of developing and implementing customer solutions and its effects on the wider business environment by investigating customers and suppliers in the global mining industry (Australia, Chile, and Sweden), analyzing the deployment of a new customer solution, and assessing the changes to the competitive environment and focal firms' relationships with other customers and suppliers. It shows that the forces that drive customer and supplier interests and motivation to co-develop customer solutions may change over time, thus redefining the aim and scope of solutions and creating failure risks. Customers present problems; suppliers respond, on the basis of not only the feasibility of the customer-specific solution but also of their evaluation of future solutions in a broader market; then suppliers aim to standardize successful solutions across markets. Customers want close supplier relationships and unique solutions but also like standardized and repeatable solutions, so they can share development costs with competitors and expose the supplier to competition to avoid lock-in effects. From a network perspective, a novel solution can have a market-shaping effect and evoke reactions from other actors who want to enhance their market position. However, these changes are not necessarily deliberate, and the dynamics that market introductions of solutions trigger may be difficult to predict.     

Detecting the relationship between competitive intensity and firm product line length: Evidence from the worldwide mobile phone industry

The way firms lengthen or shorten their product line with respect to rivals is regarded as one of the possible strategies firms can pursue to respond to competition. This article builds and tests hypotheses to study the effect of different levels of competitive intensity on product line length. The empirical analysis of data on 3,527 handset models introduced by 66 mobile phone vendors from 1994 to 2010 shows a consistent inverse U‐shaped relationship between competitive intensity and the firm's product line length. In this way, we pinpoint an interesting link between the product line extension literature and the competitive dynamics and competitive intensity perspectives. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd     

Search Cost and Price Dispersion in Vertically Related Markets: The Case of Bank Loans and Deposits

Using data on marginal interest rates of loan and deposit products by Spanish banks, we find that the level of interest rates on loans (deposits) across geographic markets decrease (increase) with the number of banks in each market, and that the level of interest rates on loans increases with the level of interest rates of deposits. We also find that the dispersion of interest rates of both loans and deposits increase with the number of banks. This evidence is interpreted as evidence of customer’s search costs in retail banking, consistent with predictions from the Carlson and McAfee (J Polit Econ 91:480–493, 1983) model of market competition with search costs.     

Community response grids: E-government, social networks, and effective emergency management

This paper explores the concept of developing community response grids (CRGs) for community emergency response and the policy implications of such a system. CRGs make use of the Internet and mobile communication devices, allowing residents and responders to share information, communicate, and coordinate activities in response to a major disaster. This paper explores the viability of using mobile communication technologies and the Web, including e-government, to develop response systems that would aid communities before, during, and after a major disaster, providing channels for contacting residents and responders, uploading information, distributing information, coordinating the responses of social networks, and facilitating resident-to-resident assistance. Drawing upon research from computer science, information studies, public policy, emergency management, and several other disciplines, the paper elaborates on the concept of and need for CRGs, examines related current efforts that can inform the development of CRGs, discusses how research about community networks can be used to instill trust and social capital in CRGs, and examines the issues of public policy, telecommunications, and e-government related to such a system.