First university supervisor: dr. ir. M. W. Hillen Second university supervisor: dr. ir. N.R. Faber Supervisor De Ondernemers BV: drs. R. ten Cate
Master thesis
Research into the organizational acceptance of mobile Location Based
Advertising (LBA) to maximize the value of mobile LBA for Dutch organizations.
Lucel Mulder Turkooisstraat 33 9743 KX Groningen lucelmulder@gmail.com 0641260420 Student number: 1493612 University of Groningen MSc Business Development
Preface
The purpose of this research is to investigate in which way the value of mobile location based advertising (LBA) for organizations can be maximized. To reach this purpose I explored the concept of mobile LBA worldwide and in the Netherlands, researched the relevant functionalities of mobile LBA for organizations, studied 10 organizations at two levels in the city of Groningen and determined the factors that affect their decision to adopt mobile LBA, and made recommendations for the best way of implementation. Finally, recommendations are made for De Ondernemers BV, the company where I wrote my master thesis, which is a meta-organization in the start-up of a mobile location based advertising service called Profitbird. The data were obtained by theoretical research and interviews/surveys with the headquarters (or owners) and store managers of the companies in Groningen.
I enjoyed conducting this research. Informing (and convincing) organizations of the possibilities of mobile LBA gave an interesting view of the mobile strategy of organizations today. The high degree of traditional marketing is amazing and certainly an eye-opener for me. I would like to recommend reading the results and subsequently the recommendations of this research carefully, especially when your business is comparable with the small and medium sized companies in Groningen. Even more important, do something with this information! Use it when (further) developing your mobile strategy! When you join the rapid development of mobile LBA too late, other companies will outrun you.
Index
Preface ... 1
Summary ... 4
Chapter 1: Mobile Location Based Advertising ... 5
1.1 The concept of mobile LBA ... 5
1.2 Scope of LBA worldwide ... 8
1.3 Push and pull advertising ... 8
1.4 The process of mobile LBA ... 9
1.4.1 Functionalities ... 11
1.5 Mobile LBA in the Netherlands ... 13
1.6 Future ... 14
Chapter 2: De Ondernemers BV and the case ‘Profitbird’ ... 15
2.1 De Ondernemers BV ... 15
2.2 Case ... 15
Chapter 3: Research design ... 17
3.1 Problem context ... 17 3.2 Problem statement... 17 3.3 Assignment ... 17 3.4 Research question ... 17 3.5 Scope ... 17 3.6 Project approach ... 18
Chapter 4: Relevant functionalities of mobile LBA ... 20
4.1 Method ... 20
4.2 Results ... 20
4.2.1 Descriptive statistics ... 20
4.2.2 Correlations ... 21
4.2.3 Combination quantitative and qualitative results ... 22
4.3 Conclusion ... 23
Chapter 5: Variables of organizational acceptance of mobile LBA ... 24
5.1 Worldwide ... 24
5.2 Dutch market ... 25
5.2.1 Attitude towards adoption of mobile LBA ... 26
5.3 Conclusion ... 28
6.1 UTAUT-model ... 29
6.2 Theoretical framework and hypotheses ... 32
6.2.1 Independent variables ... 33
6.2.2 Moderators ... 33
Chapter 7: Methodology ... 35
7.1 Survey design ... 35
7.2 Internal Validity ... 35
Chapter 8: Analysis and results ... 37
8.1 Correlations ... 37
8.2 Regression analyses ... 37
8.2.1 Regression analyses constructs ... 37
8.3 Conclusion ... 39
Chapter 9: Ways for implementation of mobile LBA ... 40
9.1 Recommendations ... 40
9.2 Conclusion ... 41
Chapter 10: Case “Profitbird” ... 42
10.1 Profitbird ... 42
10.2 Recommendations ... 42
Chapter 11: Conclusion ... 44
11.1 Discussion ... 44
11.2 Generalization, limitations and future research ... 45
References ... 46
Appendix A: Surveys ... 49
Appendix B: Interview questions ... 66
Appendix C: Correlations functionalities mobile LBA ... 67
Appendix D: Correlations UTAUT-model ... 69
Summary
User acceptance of new technology has been extensively researched with several models. However, little research has been done towards organizational acceptance of new technology, and even less into the organizational acceptance of mobile Location Based Advertising (LBA). Mobile LBA is defined as marketer controlled information customized for recipients’ geographic positions and received on mobile communication devices. These interactive services are used for push and pull advertising, based on opt ins and opt outs by mobile users, with the goal of profit for the mobile user as well as the advertising organization.
This research investigates mobile LBA worldwide and in the Netherlands. Research has been conducted among five organizations in the city of Groningen, which were studied at the level of headquarters or owner and at the level of store managers. Since key persons at these levels decide if mobile LBA will be adopted or not, their attitude towards mobile LBA was researched. The research has been done in a quantitative way with surveys based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and Use of Technology and interest for identified functionalities of mobile LBA was measured at a Likert-scale. The collected characteristics of these five organizations combined with the results should provide a “mirror” for other Dutch organizations who are considering adopting mobile LBA. The quantitative research is combined with explorative and qualitative interviews among ten organizations in the city of Groningen to provide a complete picture of the organizational acceptance of mobile LBA.
Based on the results from the theoretical and empirical research, the paper makes several recommendations for the best way of implementing mobile LBA by Dutch organizations. Furthermore, recommendations are made for De Ondernemers BV, a meta-organization with a start-up of a mobile LBA service called Profitbird.
Chapter 1: Mobile Location Based Advertising
1.1 The concept of mobile LBA
Mobile location based services (LBS) came up around the year 2000. The first devices and applications (apps) were created for personal digital assistants (handheld computers) and included weather and traffic apps. They were followed by friend finders, LBS dating and LBS games. Commercials were launched for the first mobile phones equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) and users were able to determine their location and search near that location to obtain a list of requested locations like stores and restaurants.
Nowadays, mobile location based services enable the search and discovery of persons, places and things within an identifiable space defined by distinct parameters. These parameters include social networks, individuals, cities, neighborhoods, landmarks and actions that are relevant to the searchers past, current and future locations. A broad but accurate description of mobile LBS can be found on Wikipedia and is presented in the box below (box 1).
Box 1: Description of mobile LBS (Wikipedia, 2010)
Since mobile location based services are a wide variety of information and entertainment services and this research focuses on the advertising possibilities for organizations, the scope of the research will be limited to location based advertising (LBA). As mentioned in the box above, LBS can include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. Furthermore, this kind of LBA should provide profit for the mobile user as well as the organization. The applied definition of mobile LBA for this research is presented in the box below (box 2).
Box 2: Definition of mobile LBA (based on Bruner & Kumar, 2007)
Mobile LBA should not be confused with mobile advertising. These concepts are not the same since mobile LBA is a specific type of mobile advertising. Mobile advertising refers to advertisements that are sent to individual mobile phones via various mobile delivery technologies. In contrast, with mobile LBA the advertisements are determined by the recipient’s location (Bruner & Kumar, 2007).
Mobile location based services are information and entertainment services, accessible with mobile devices through the mobile network and utilizing the ability to make use of the geographical position of the mobile device. They can be used in a variety of contexts, such as health, work, personal life etc. LBS services include services to identify a location of a person or object, such as discovering the nearest banking cash machine or the whereabouts of a friend or employee. LBS can include mobile commerce when taking the form of coupons or advertising directed at customers based on their current location. They include personalized weather services and even location-based games.
Mobile location based advertising is marketer controlled information customized for recipients’ geographic positions and received on mobile communication devices. These interactive services are used for push and pull advertising, based on opt ins and opt outs by mobile users, with the goal of profit for the mobile user as well as the advertising organization.
Location is an important aspect nowadays. It started with the success of Foursquare and Gowalla, and recently the launch of Facebook Places in the autumn of 2010 for the United States, the United Kingdom, Japan and Canada. These are location based social networking services offering users the possibility to share their location (check in) and let them add photos or advices to specific locations, so-called user generated content. One can see the popularity of these apps at the increase of users in one month, for instance July 2010 (RJMetrics, 2010).
Figure 1: Statistics Foursquare/Gowalla (RJMetrics, 2010)
At an increasing scale the feature ‘Deals’ is added to these services which offers for example reductions or special gadgets to users who check in at a certain location for a specific amount of times. This kind of deals are a perfect example of the kind of mobile LBA meant in this research since they are explicitly shown to people who choose to share their location to earn relevant deals. For instance, as of November 2010 Facebook is rolling out their new application Facebook Deals (connected to Facebook Places) in the United States and the United Kingdom, which is expected to follow in the footsteps of Facebook itself. Figure 2 presents a visual presentation of the most used social networks worldwide, Facebook is indicated with blue.
Emarketer (2010) forecasts that Facebook will have $4 billion in advertisement revenues worldwide in 2011, which is 68% of all social network advertisement spending worldwide. For comparison, Twitter is expected to attract $150 million in spending. In total, worldwide social network spending is expected to reach almost $6 billion this year, amounting to $3.1 billion in the United States and $2.9 billion in international markets.
Figure 2: Most used social networks worldwide (Google & Alexa, 2010)
Mobile LBA offers a media channel with potential to penetrate deeply into an end user’s personal space. In the past advertisements were brought to your doorstep, in forms that ranged from daily newspapers to direct marketing. Broadcast added a new generic method into the mix, while internet and e-mail marketing revolutionized the ability to target more narrowly and measure more accurately. Each of these media got closer to end users and captured more of their attention.
The leap from marketing on the Internet to marketing on mobile phones, though, is a significant one: targeted marketing can reach one user, on one medium, at the right time and place, and provide instant feedback on the performance of the ad or marketing message (such as number of ads served and responded to). No other medium can offer these advantages. The penetration of advertising and marketing messages into the personal circle makes it more important that they be relevant, since consumers will be less tolerant of unwarranted personal contact on their mobile devices (Peterson e.a., 2009). Printed Broadcast Internet Mobile phone Consumer
1.2 Scope of LBA worldwide
It should be no surprise one needs a mobile subscription to effectively be targeted by mobile LBA. Europe has seen the number of mobile subscriptions remaining almost unchanged in the first quarter of 2010, after having broken the 1 billion milestone by the end of 2009. When compared to other parts of the world, Europe emerges as the only region where the amount of mobile subscriptions headed down. For instance, North America which is a mature market as well managed to grow mobile users by 1,5% in the referred quarter and emerging markets such as Asia-Pacific measured an increase up to 6% (Dataxis, 2010). However, it should be noted that Europe is one of the most advanced mobile communications markets worldwide and had an exploding growth.
These figures are confirmed by eMarketer (2010), which measured 747.4 million subscribers in China by 2009 which is expected to grow to 1311.7 million in 2014. India had 525.2 million subscribers in 2009 which is expected to grow to 853.0 million in 2014. CTIA (2010) measured a number of 292.8 million subscribers in the USA itself by 2009.
Companies react to this exploding growth figures and are expected to invest heavily in mobile advertising and marketing in the nearby future. They are placing advertisements within a variety of mobile media formats including mobile internet, games and applications, mobile video, mobile TV, streaming music, test and media alerts. According to Strategy Analytics (2010) companies worldwide spent $3.6 billion in 2009 which is expected to grow to $38 billion in 2015. ABI Research (2009) estimates the global expenditure in 2009 at $7,5 billion with a forecast to 21.2 billion in 2012. Juniper Research (2009) predicts that the total expenditure was $1.4 billion in 2009, growing to $6 billion in 2014. Gartner (2009) estimates that the amount of mobile LBS users will grow worldwide from 96 million in 2009 to more than 526 million in 2012.
Berg Insight (2010) states that mobile handsets are in an excellent position to become the primary digital channel for providers of banking and related financial services in emerging markets. These mobile payments are often bound to the location of the user. Berg Insight estimates there were 55 million users of mobile banking and related services in 2009 which is expected to grow to 894 million users globally in 2015. GIA (2010) predicts the amount of these users will reach 1.1 billion by the year 2015. ABI Research (2009) forecasts that in 2013 there will be nearly half a billion customers of mobile financial services (MFS), including mobile banking, mobile domestic person-to-person payments and international person-to-person payments.
The figures above must be placed into perspective because more than mobile LBA alone is represented. As mentioned in the previous section mobile LBA is a part of mobile LBS as well as a specific type of mobile advertising. However, due to a lack of specific figures about mobile LBA the presented figures should give an insight into the fast growing and turbulent field where the activities of mobile LBA take place at a growing scale.
1.3 Push and pull advertising
Box 2 in section 1.1 mentioned the terms push and pull advertising, which are often used in the field of location based advertising. Basically, it means that users do (pull) or do not (push) ask for advertisements on their mobile devices at a specific time and location (Unni e.a., 2007). The relevance of these advertisements differs and users should always be given the possibility to opt in (subscribe) or opt out (unsubscribe) for such LBA.
Push advertising is any content sent by or on behalf of advertisers and marketers to a wireless mobile device at a time other than when the subscriber requests it. In push LBA, advertising messages are sent to a consumer’s mobile phone (or mobile device) based on that consumer’s location and previously stated product preferences (Paavilainen, 2002). With push LBA, consumers have less control and marketers have more control over the flow of advertising and promotions. This option may appeal to marketers because it overcomes consumer inactivity in activating (and sometimes reactivating) LBA that is likely to be associated with pull LBA (Buckley 2004). Push LBA also provides a potentially effective way to trigger impulse buying. However, it would likely be more intrusive. Pull advertising is any advertising message sent to the wireless subscriber upon request shortly thereafter on a one time basis. Pull LBA is advertising specific to the location of the consumer delivered to the mobile device only when it is explicitly requested for. In this type of LBA, the consumer initiates the request for advertising or promotions for preferred product categories close to his or her location.
Given the negative perceptions and reactions to spam as well as regulatory pressures on mobile advertising, there is general agreement that LBA should be permission-based, thus pull advertising. (Barnes and Scornavacca, 2004). Empirical findings suggest that consumers would evaluate mobile advertising negatively unless they had previously agreed to receive such advertising (Tsang e.a., 2004). Consumers would sign up or opt-in to receive relevant advertising and promotions (Barwise e.a., 2002; Gratton, 2002). Such an approach would also be necessary to ensure precision in targeting by LBA marketers (Godin, 1999).
1.4 The process of mobile LBA
This section discusses functionalities of mobile LBA that could be relevant for organizations. These functionalities are derived from literature and expert views and represent the possible functionalities of mobile LBA nowadays, so it is a representation of the current available information. It should be noted that mobile LBA is part of a rapid developing market, which means that the presented information could be outdated soon. The identified functionalities are presented in figure 4, which visualizes the process of mobile LBA. Furthermore, each functionality will be adressed to create insight into their value for organizations.
Consumer Organization Visitor statistics Market and trendreports Brand monitoring Provider of mobile LBA Conversion Opt in, c heck in o r opt out
Metrics
Based on check-in history
Micro-branding Newsletter Friend deals
Viral branding Cross-advertisements Micro-surveys
Micro-advertising Loyalty management
Charity deals
Triggered by check-in
Instore tips
Area-based advertisements
Functionalities
Figure 4 shows the process of mobile LBA. Three actors can be identified: consumer, organization and the provider of mobile LBA. The consumer subscribes (opts in) to the provider of mobile LBA and shows his or her location at a frequently basis by checking in into locations. These locations could be stores from organizations. Organizations have also the possibility to subscribe to the provider of mobile LBA and subsequently place advertisements which will be send to consumers on behalf of the organizations. These advertisements are named ‘functionalities’ within the figure. It should be noted that consumers should always have the option to (partially) opt out for functionalities or for the whole service, as well as the organizations.
Functionalities are ways of advertising that organizations can use to reach the customer. Two sorts of advertisements can be identified: triggered by a check-in or based on check-in history. The first one addresses the two functionalities by which a consumer receives directly an advertisement at his smartphone when he shows his location by checking in. This check-in is processed by the provider of mobile LBA and the relevant advertisement, if entered by an organization, is sent to the consumer. The consumer is able to use the tip or advertisement directly at the store of the advertising organization.
The other functionalities are advertisements based on check-in history. These are advertisements received by an consumer at another time or consist of an advertisement which can be used at another place. The advertisements are based on check-in history, so organizations can filter their target audience for entering advertisements. For example, a clothing store can enter an advertisement for women above the 30 years old who checked in at a beauty centre in the past month.
One can see the overlap between the two ellipses with functionalities which indicates a little overlap between the functionalities triggered by check-in and functionalities based on check-in history. For instance, the loyalty deal is triggered by a first check-in en presented on the smartphone directly but requires additional check-ins to earn the deal, so it is based on check-in history to a greater extent. When an advertisement is used by a consumer, it is registered by the provider. The provider collects metrics as sent advertisements and used advertisements. With all these statistics market and trend reports are assembled and available for organizations, as well as reports about visitor statistics and brand monitoring for organizations.
Conversion is the use of an advertisement by consumers, for instance the use of an reduction when buying products. Basically, conversion means business for merchants. Therefore, mobile LBA is a smart way to achieve more revenue.
1.4.1 Functionalities
The concept of loyalty management, i.e. loyalty deals, revolves around the stimulation of repeated visits. An organization rewards the customer for repeated visits. For instance: ‘Welcome back! This is your fifth check-in at our place. We are glad to see you back and therefore you receive a reduction of 15% at one piece of clothing of your choice.’ Rewards can be discounts, special offers or cool gadgets.
Using micro advertising a company can make a focused offer (in a specific time frame and for a certain target group). When a catering boss notices that his pub is not crowded with visitors, he can
send out an advertisement. It is essential that the mobile user gets happy with the advertisement; he or she can use it at that specific time and place.
An organization can direct traffic with cross-advertisements. For instance, a catering boss would like to get the visitors of his pub at night to one of his restaurants during the day. He can make an advertisement with the requirement of five check-ins in pub A to receive a reduction of 10% in restaurant B.
Micro branding let mobile users become acquainted with the brand values of an organization by giving tips and advices. An organization can also give rewards to reward behavior which fits the brand values of an organization. An example of micro-branding is to send (a certain part) of your target group the following message: ‘Did you know that you can pay with MyOrder at all our restaurants? Free, easy and for each bank possible.’
Viral branding is about sharing mobile activities on social media like Facebook and Hyves by users. They share their check-ins at for example cosmetic stores and which offer(s) they took at that specific store. Doing so, their friends are notified of the use (and offers) of mobile LBA by an organization. When an organization uses mobile LBA, interesting visitor statistics will be generated. One can see the amount of check-ins at a store, the gender of visitors, the age etc. This can be valuable input for other marketing activities.
With micro surveys an organization can set up a conversation with customers. This functionality has the possibility to ask questions to (a certain part) of the target group. For instance, a clothing store would like to know which brands are favorite among their customers. The customers know the answer and almost everybody will take ten seconds to answer one question.
When using mobile LBA by multiple organizations, anonymous statistics are generated. The statistics give insight into behavior of the users: amount of check-ins, visited stores, timeframes, patterns etc. These statistics can be used to compose market and trend reports.
The functionality newsletter is a periodic newsletter (for instance once a week) sent towards the users of mobile LBA. This is a newsletter with offers, tips and news from their favorite stores. For instance: ‘At January 10th our winter sale starts. You – as user of mobile LBA – are welcome at January 9th after closing hours.’
When a customer walks inside a store and checks in at a provider of mobile LBA, this person can see which offers are tailored to him or her by receiving instore tips. For instance: ‘Welcome! You can find our towels at the first floor, which come with a reduction for you’.
An example of area-based advertisements is when a person checks in at the neighborhood, he receives the tip to stop by a cafe. For instance: ‘Good to know you are in the neighborhood, want to stop by for a cup of coffee? When you show this message, you get your second cup of coffee for free!’
Brand monitoring provides an overview with all the conversations of a certain store or brand. This overview is composed of all the conversations about the subject on Twitter, Facebook, Hyves etc. By
listening and responding to these questions, remarks and complaints, an organization can improve its performance.
People shop or eat often together and friend deals enables organizations to enter an advertisement with discounts for groups (up to a certain number of people) if they all check in at the same place. With charity deals, an organization can show their customers that they care about people or animals in distress. Organizations can set up a deal for which a specific amount of money is donated automatically to a charity of choice for each used advertisement at the store.
1.5 Mobile LBA in the Netherlands
This section creates insight into the Dutch market of mobile LBA since the focus of this research is to maximize the value of mobile LBA for Dutch organizations. The Netherlands is one of the most hyped mobile communications markets in Europe with a penetration rate above 100% of the population since the end of 2007. It has managed to cope well with the economic downturn throughout 2008 and 2009 by registering new mobile subscriptions each quarter (Dataxis, 2010). According to MarketResponse (2010) the amount people that use mobile internet in the Netherlands increased from 1.5 million at the end of 2009 to 2.2 million halfway 2010 (increase of 47%). The figure below presents the distribution of the age of users (figure 5).
Figure 5: Increase number of people that uses mobile internet (%)
One can see that the strongest increase was measured by users at a young age. The category ‘18 -24’ (46%) on top, followed by the category ‘25-34 years’ (30%), the category ‘35 - 44 years’ (28%) and at last the category ‘45 – 54 years’ (14%). From 55 years till 65 the increase of the number of users that uses mobile internet stays at the same level and a decrease was measured at the category 65+. Valuewait (2010) confirms the results of the age of people that use mobile internet and gives more insight into the demographics with a research among more than 3000 Dutch people that uses mobile internet. These are mostly men (58% against 42% women), in general below the age of 35 (62% versus 23% in the category 35-54 and 11% above the age of 54) and do have a high (50%) or average (33%) level of education, just 12% has a low level of education. These figures are presented in figure 6. Valuewait also states that 50% of the respondents do use the mobile internet (much) more in the period of half a year (January 2010 – July 2010). They use it mainly to visit communicative and informative sites, like e-mail, news, weather, public transport etc. Furthermore, these people see their mobile phone as indispensable and they spend more and more time at the mobile internet and the use of mobile apps.
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Figure 6: Demographics research Valuewait
Recently, the trend of growth began to reverse as the amount of mobile subscriptions dropped by 9% to 16,9 million at the end of March 2010 compared to its level six months earlier (figure 7). The biggest mobile network operators (KPN, Vodafone and T-mobile) have all undergone a loss of subscriptions in the first quarter of 2010 ranging from 2% for T-mobile to nearly 5% for market leader KPN. However, remaining subscribers seemed to have spent more on monthly average revenue per user (ARPU) to reach a record level of € 30,- since mid-2008 (Dataxis, 2010).
According to CBS (2010) 91% of the young Dutch people are active on social networks like Hyves, Twitter and Facebook. This is the second highest percentage in Europe, only Poland scores higher. The participation decreases with an increasing age. Facebook has 1,5 million Dutch users in the Netherlands, which makes it an interesting platform for advertising (Netwerven, 2010).
From a market research of Ruigrok NetPanel (2010) became clear that a minority of the Dutch people shares their location with other people. It becomes clear that 57% of the respondents do have mobile internet but do not share their location. Also, 74% of the respondents are (very) negative toward location based advertising. Half of the respondents say that they won’t use LBA in the future. It is noteworthy that the respondents are all above 18 years.
Valuewait (2010) states that 55% prefers that advertisements are only visible of brands and products when they meet the preferences of these people. 70% of the respondents are willing to provide some information about them to give organization the opportunity for relevant advertising.
1.6 Future
Juniper Research predicts there will be more and more standard applications installed on mobile phones, like thermometers and three dimensional or even holographic displays and projectors. Especially augmented reality-applications, computerized images added directly to real images, have huge potential for advertising. Another prediction is the expected general availability of mobile banking for people in developed countries like the Netherlands. An example is Near Field Communication (NFC), a short-range communication technology which enables the exchange of data between devices over a distance of 10 centimeter, applicable in public transportation and payments. At last, cloud based operating systems are expected to launch in 2011 which is location independent computing whereby shared servers provide resources, software and data. Basically, it is remote computing for which consumers do not longer have need for expertise or control over the technology infrastructure ‘in the cloud’ that supports them.
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Chapter 2: De Ondernemers BV and the case ‘Profitbird’
2.1 De Ondernemers BV
De Ondernemers BV is a consultancy company for New Business Development. The organization has specialized themselves in the development and prototyping of concepts. They invent, undertake a field test and further develop the concept to a viable and marketable product or service. Moreover, they know how to implement a new product or service into the market successfully. Their vision is presented in the box below (box 3).
Box 3: Vision of De Ondernemers BV (De Ondernemers BV, 2010)
2.2 Case
De Ondernemers BV state that “we have spotted the problems and frustration of organizations nowadays: the difficulty to attract visitors to their store, pub, supermarket, warehouse etc. and ensure repeated visits. Traditional media gets less and less attention from consumers since they experience it as irrelevant mass communication. Marketing through social media seems to be the trend of 2011 but not every organization has the time or knowledge to develop their own social media strategy.”
De Ondernemers BV built a business plan to develop a tool which combined social media and location based advertisements, to provide a very specific and personal communication between organizations and their target group. They named it Profitbird.
Entrepreneurship is more relevant than ever. Developments at the labor market, the economy and also (more general) in the society ask for more entrepreneurs. Those are people who cannot wait till the boss or the government tell them what to do. Instead they discover opportunities on their own en take initiative.
Entrepreneurship is not something magical. It is definitively not ‘something what you got or not’. Everyone can learn it, just like cycling or ice-skating, you develop yourself by effort and hard work. Entrepreneurship is looking around, see chances, assess risks and just go. We think that all these qualities can be learned and trained, just like the whole concept of entrepreneurship. The development of an idea to the development of a chance to a concept and in the end to a
company, is a systematical, craftmans project. We trained very different people to undertake this project, from students to psychiatrists, from Groningen to Georgia.
Entrepreneurship is like a conversation. A conversation with the market, to make sure you understand each other. That is the reason ‘the story’ is an important concept in our approach. If the story is right, the story tells itself, so you (as an entrepreneur) have a strong stimulus. If the story is not right, you should work intensively to bring in customers, investors and others. We help people to get more out of their entrepreneurship and especially to sharpen their story.
Profitbird should provide the opportunity for organizations to make relevant offers towards consumers based on their actual behavior. Users of Profitbird show their location at Facebook by checking in to the stores of organizations with their smartphone for which they receive reductions and special offers on products or services. Organizations use the check-in history to provide very specific offers. For instance, a certain amount of check-ins at the sports centre gives Profitbird-users a reduction at a store for sporting goods. So, no mass communication but relevant advices and offers which fit the profile of the recipient; no spam but welcome surprises.
De Ondernemers BV assembled a focus group of mobile users to gather their opinions about Profitbird and concluded that there is a market for this product. However, it is hard to predict in what matter a certain technology will be utilized by the intended users, in this case organizations. De Ondernemers BV would like to comprehend what the user’s experience with and expectations for a this technology will be. So, they are insecure about the attitude of organizations towards the acceptance and use Profitbird, the functionalities to be used and the best way of implementation. De Ondernemers BV want to provide maximized value towards organizations and decided to a first round of interviews with organizations in the city Groningen.
At this point, the assignment for this research was given by drs. R. ten Cate on behalf of De Ondernemers BV in accordance with first university supervisor dr. ir. M.W. Hillen and second university supervisor dr. ir. N.R. Faber. The timeframe was determined from October 2010 till March 2011. The research design is presented in chapter 3.
Chapter 3: Research design
3.1 Problem context
Many Dutch organizations acknowledge the existence and the possibilities of social media but do not know how to use social media in their own organization. Although more and more organization are listening in social media what is being said about their brand or organization, only a small part reacts to this so-called buzz. Even less organizations use social media in a proactive manner by using mobile LBA. Since this new technology is characterized by an explosive growth (chapter 1), research should be conducted to explore this new field in a quantitative and qualitative way. Moreover, this research focuses on the organizational acceptance of mobile LBA since extensive research has been conducted towards the end user, i.e. consumer, acceptance of new technology already.
3.2 Problem statement
Theoretical and empirical research are required to get insight into relevant functionalities of mobile LBA, determine influential variables for the organizational acceptance and come up with guidelines for implementation of mobile LBA, for maximizing the value of mobile LBA for Dutch organizations.
3.3 Assignment
Research relevant functionalities of mobile LBA and variables of acceptance of mobile LBA and make recommendations for the best way of implementation of mobile LBA by organizations to maximize the value of mobile LBA for Dutch organizations.
3.4 Research question
The following research question will be used.
How to maximize the value of mobile LBA for organizations?
To answer the research question, the following sub questions are formulated. Which functionalities should be offered by the provider?
Which variables influence the organizational attitude towards mobile LBA? How should organizations implement mobile LBA?
How should De Ondernemers BV implement their location based advertising service “Profitbird”?
3.5 Scope
The question arises what mobile LBA can mean for organizations and what variables influence the organizational acceptance of mobile LBA. Are there similarities or differences between levels in one organization? These levels are pre-determined to two levels, a key person at the level of headquarters or the owner and a store manager. This decision has been made because the acceptance of a new technology should be supported by key persons in the organizations since they decide to adopt mobile LBA or not. Furthermore, when organizations developed a positive attitude towards mobile LBA, how should organizations implement this new technology?
3.6 Project approach
The research design is visualized in the project approach below.
Research question
Maximizing the value of mobile LBA for
organizations
Subquestion 1
Functionalities that should be offered by the
provider
Subquestion 2
Influential variables at the organizational attitude
towards mobile LBA
Subquestion 3
Recommendations for implementing mobile LBA
by organizations
Subquestion 4
Recommendations for De Ondernemers BV to implement ‘Profitbird’
Scientific Research
Case
Theoretical and empirical research
Figure 7: Project approach
The scientific research exists of theoretical and empirical research, which will be applied to the first three sub questions. Empirical research consists of surveys at five organizations (quantitative) and interviews at ten organizations (explorative and qualitative). The survey is distributed at two levels within one organization: a key person at the level of headquarters or the owner and a store manager. The survey at the level of headquarters/owner consists of three parts: characteristics organization, functionalities mobile LBA and variables of acceptance. For the level of store manager, the survey is the same except that the first part is left out and the other parts are adapted to the level of store manager. The surveys can be found in appendix A. The interviews are held with a key person at the level of headquarters or the owner; the used questions are presented in appendix B.
The triangulation by multiple data collection methods provides stronger substantiation of constructs and hypotheses (Eisenhardt, 1989). Moreover, the combination of data types can be highly synergistic. Quantitative evidence can indicate relationships which may not be salient to the
researcher. It also can keep researchers from being carried away by vivid, but false, impressions in qualitative data, and it can bolster findings when it corroborates those findings from qualitative evidence. The qualitative data are useful for understanding the rationale or theory underlying relationships revealed in the quantitative data or may suggest directly theory which can then be strengthened by quantitative support (Jick, 1979).
The first sub question addresses the research towards functionalities of mobile LBA for organization, which will come up with functionalities that a provider of mobile LBA should offer. The second sub question discusses variables of acceptance variables among organizations and presents the most influential variables. The third sub question translates the relevant functionalities and influential variables into recommendations for ways of implementing mobile LBA. At last, recommendations will be made for De Ondernemers BV how to implement Profitbird which is also expected to affect the value of mobile LBA for organizations, at first the organizations in Groningen (expressed by the dotted line). All together, the sub questions are formulated to come up with conclusions that maximize the value of mobile LBA for organizations (research question).
Chapter 4: Relevant functionalities of mobile LBA
Which functionalities should be offered by the provider?
4.1 Method
Research has been done among five organizations at two levels in the city of Groningen to create insight into the interest towards the identified functionalities. These functionalities are derived from literature and recommended analysts, and were presented in chapter 1. The collected date for this part of the research has been analyzed with the statistical software SPSS (version 17). The highest average scores of interest will be highlighted and correlation analyses will be performed to create insight into the interest from organizations at the specified levels towards functionalities of mobile LBA. The results will be discussed with qualitative output from conducted interviews with ten organizations; five of them participated in the quantitative research. The used interview questions can be found in appendix B.
4.2 Results
The first part of the survey assembled the characteristics of the researched organizations. The results are presented in the table below and further used in chapter 5.
Table 1: Characteristics of an average establishment
The second part of the research assembled the amount of interest towards the identified functionalities of mobile LBA. Interest into a certain functionality is expressed by an average score of 4 or higher, since this corresponds with the Likert-scale in the survey (1 = very disinterested, 5 = very interested). The score 4 represents ‘interested’ ranging to the score 5 ‘very interested’. For each organizational level, the three most valued functionalities will be identified.
4.2.1 Descriptive statistics
Table 2 presents an overview of the interest from key persons at the level of headquarters/owner towards functionalities of mobile LBA. When we take a look at the mean, we can compose a top-6: Loyalty management, viral branding, visitor statistics, in-store tips, area-based advertisements and friend deals. Taking into account the standard deviation, less is better, we can state that key persons at the level of headquarters/owner are most interested in loyalty management, viral branding and visitor statistics. The low standard deviation ensures a higher probability of the measured effect when generalizing it to the population.
Industry No. of personnel Annual marketing budget Degree of (de)centralization No. of establishments Restaurants 35 6000 Neutral 8
Supermarkets 230 8000 Very decentralized 2
Clothing 2 1500 Neutral 4
Horeca 15 5500 Centralized 7
Headquarters/owner Store manager
Mean Std. Deviation Mean Std. Deviation
Loyalty management 4,20 ,447 4,00 ,000 Micro advertising 3,40 1,517 3,20 1,304 Cross offers 3,80 1,304 3,60 ,548 Micro branding 3,20 ,837 3,80 ,447 Viral branding 4,20 ,447 4,20 ,447 Visitor statistics 4.20 .447 3.80 1.095 Micro surveys 3.60 .894 3.40 .894
Market and trend
reports 3.40 .548 4.20 .447 Newsletter 3.80 1.304 4.00 1.225 Instore tips 4.20 .837 3.80 1.643 Area-based advertisements 4.20 .837 4.40 .548 Brand monitoring 3,60 ,894 3,60 ,548 Friend deals 4,00 ,707 3,60 1,673 Charity deal 3,40 ,548 3,20 ,837
Table 2: Descriptive statistics functionalities (N = 5)
Table 2 presents also an overview of the interest from store managers towards functionalities of mobile LBA. When we take a look at the mean, we can compose a top-5: Loyalty management, viral branding, market and trend reports, newsletter and area-based advertisements. Taking into account the standard deviation, less is better, we can state that store managers are most interested in loyalty management, viral branding and market and trend reports.
4.2.2 Correlations
Correlation analyses were performed to discover significant relations between interests for functionalities of mobile LBA. The results can be found in appendix C and are discussed below. At the level headquarters/owner, it becomes clear that there is a significant positive correlation between loyalty management and viral branding (r = 1,000, p = 0,000). There is also a significant positive correlation between cross-offers and micro-branding (r = 0,963, p = 0,009). Furthermore, a significant positive correlation exists between micro-branding and newsletter (r = 0,963, p = 0,009).
At the level for store manager a significant positive correlation exists between micro-advertising and micro surveys (r = 0,986, p = 0,002). There is also a significant positive correlation between viral branding and market and trend reports (r = 1,000, p = 0,000). Furthermore, it becomes clear that there is a significant positive correlation between visitor statistics and newsletter (r = 0,932, p = 0,021). Also between visitor statistics and friend deals a significant positive correlation was measured (r = 0,900, p = 0,037). Another result is the significant positive correlation between micro surveys and brand monitoring (r = 0,919, p = 0,028). Subsequently, a significant positive correlation between newsletter and friend deals (r = 0,976, p = 0,004), and between newsletter and charity deals (r = 0,976, p = 0,004) was measured. At last, a significant positive correlation becomes clear between friend deals and charity deals (r = 0,964, p = 0,008).
The large amount of high correlations indicates an interest into a wide variety of functionalities by store managers to stimulate their business. The choice of visitor statistics, micro-surveys and friend deals seems to affect the other variables the most. Visitor statistics correlate with two other functionalities: newsletter and friend deals. Micro-surveys correlate with micro-advertising and brand monitoring and friend deals are close related to visitor statistics, newsletter and charity deals. An explanation could be that the related functionalities have a similar score and thus valued at the same level by store managers. However, the average score is lower than other functionalities since none of the functionalities visitor statistics, micro-surveys and friend deals come back in the top-3 of most valued functionalities. Another explanation could be that the sample of five organizations is unable to discriminate at the level of store manager. Also store managers could be unable to be selective, or distinguish between the functionalities.
4.2.3 Combination quantitative and qualitative results
The interviews among ten organizations with key persons at the level of headquarters or the owner revealed different problems and challenges. For instance, some organizations are struggling to get customers into their store where others face the challenge to get consumers to the point that they to actual buy their products instead of becoming a store to take a look or get advice and buy elsewhere (online). However, the interviews discovered also similarities among these problems and challenges. Since this research should be generalized to other organizations in Dutch cities, we address these similarities and challenges, and eventually reinforce them with the quantitative results from the previous section.
A main similarity is the difficulty for organizations to attract people to their store, probably caused by the little response on traditional media (flyers, newspapers). They state that when people are inside they are positive about actual purchases by these people, for example due to size and specialism of (personnel in) the store. So, there is a challenge to attract new consumers to the store and stimulate repeated visits by earlier customers. Attracting new visitors can be done with micro-advertising and repeated visits can be achieved with loyalty management, reinforced by the high interest for loyalty management among key persons at the level of headquarters/owner but also store managers share the same opinion.
Furthermore, organizations want to express themselves more. They would like to inform people about issues within their organization besides their main task. For instance, one organization would like to promote their room rental for seminars, another organization wants to inform their customers about the attention for social responsibility within their organization. This outcome can be partially linked to the high interest for viral branding among the researched organizations. Although viral
branding is primarily aimed at publishing check-ins and the use of offers/reductions from advertisements, this can also be used to make people aware of other issues. However, a functionality like branding fits this challenge better but it should be noted that viral branding and micro-branding does have also a certain degree of overlap.
An interesting result is the ultimate high positive correlation between loyalty management and viral branding (r = 1,000, p = 0,000) at the level of headquarters/owner. This correlation indicates that the choice for loyalty management results always in the subsequent choice for viral branding and vice versa. However, this high correlation cannot be found at the level of store manager.
Organizations would like to direct traffic from establishment A to establishment B within the same organization or between different organizations. When you assume that consumers should get a tip or advice about possibilities at another establishment or organizations, the significant high correlation between cross advertisements and micro branding (r = 0,963, p = 0,009) fits the picture. The functionality cross advertisements does not have a direct high interest, expressed by a mean lower than 4.
Since organizations do not receive much feedback from customers they are interested in collecting feedback through innovative ways. This corresponds with the results at the level of headquarters/owner: the need for market and trend reports is at the top-3. Another collector of visitor behavior is the functionality visitor statistics, which has an high interest from the point of view of store managers. Furthermore, organizations state to have limitations within organizations to implement new IT-systems. So, the technique should be independent among the current systems or explicitly written to connect with them.
At last, personal attention from the organization for the customer is important. The privacy of customers should be guaranteed and new technology must not be spam. Obviously, the processes within these organizations revolve around the customer and multiple functionalities can support these opinions. For instance, loyalty management is about rewarding the customer for repeated visits which most people experience as positive and not as spam. Furthermore, the privacy of customers is guaranteed since customers apply for loyalty deals (like customer cards nowadays), thus choose to share information about them. Since loyalty management is personalized, there is personal attention from the organization towards the customer.
4.3 Conclusion
At the level of headquarters/owner the functionalities loyalty management, viral branding and visitor statistics seem to be most important. Store managers have a high interest for loyalty management, viral branding and market and trend reports. The conclusion can be drawn that loyalty management and viral branding have a high interest from organizations.
The combined results from the surveys and interviews revealed five similarities and/or challenges: (a) challenge to attract people to the store, (b) challenge to inform people about (other) activities of the organization, (c) challenge to get feedback for customers, (d) personal attention for customer and (5) the issue of privacy. These issues can be covered with the use of one or more functionalities, especially functionalities like loyalty management, viral branding but and statistics (market- and trend reports and visitor statistics) provide solutions. Therefore, these four functionalities should be offered by the provider of mobile LBA.
Chapter 5: Variables of organizational acceptance of mobile LBA
Which variables influence the organizational attitude towards mobile LBA?
5.1 Worldwide
Forrest fielded a Global Mobile Maturity Online Survey in the third quarter of 2010. They interviewed more than 200 executives in charge of their company’s mobile strategy across the globe (40% in the US, 40% in Europe, and 20% in the rest of the world). Only a third of the respondents said that they had a mobile strategy in place for more than a year. 35% of the respondents are just waking up to the mobile opportunity and thinking about integrating mobile into their overall corporate strategy. For the majority of the respondents, mobile (all activities for which a mobile phone is used) is mainly seen as a way to increase customer engagement, satisfaction and loyalty. Mobile is less useful as a way to acquire customers and generate direct revenues. Most companies are assigning clear objectives to the emerging mobile platform but still 23% consider their primary objective with mobile to be “test and learn”.
The commitment to and resources for mobile activities are still limited. Responsibility varies greatly by organization. A quarter of the respondents said that top management executives were responsible for the mobile strategy in their organizations but they should be more involved to ensure that mobile gets the right level of funding.
There is a lack of a shared mobile vision and a lack of collaboration between various departments. Just 45% with a mobile strategy in place stated that they have a shared mobile vision while only 44% have created a mobile task force to agree on mobile objectives. The majority of players still fail to quantify precise objectives, allocate costs or measure the overall success of their mobile business. Many organizations claim that they first need to fix the basics regarding their overall digital and social initiatives before focusing on mobile. However, one should bear in mind how quickly mobile is evolving.
According to a survey from the Association of National Advertisers and the Mobile Marketing Association (2010), 88% of the organizations said they will utilize mobile marketing in 2011. Moreover, 75% said they will increase their spending (by an average of 59%) in the coming year. 62% said they already used some form of mobile marketing while another 26% said they planned to begin doing so in 2011. Despite the increased usage, only 25% of the organizations said their effort was very successful. The majority of 53% said their effort where only somewhat useful. Those who said that they had above average success rates had used the medium longer and also used more (integrated) functionalities, measuring across a wide array of metrics.
The organizations also noted several barriers to adopt mobile marketing like a lack of metrics to allocate mobile marketing within its overall marketing mix, inability to prove return on investment and a lack of understanding about the medium by key people in their company. 71% of the companies assigned mobile marketing to an existing internal group, only 17% created a new internal group specifically dedicated to mobile marketing.
5.2 Dutch market
During the interviews as part of the empirical research, organizations were informed about the possibilities of mobile LBA. This was more than an acquaintance with mobile LBA and building beliefs about mobile LBA based on their own knowledge. There were extensive discussions about the relative advantage, compatibility with values and beliefs of individuals in the social system and complexity in understanding how to use the innovation. It should be noted that these companies represent a very small part of the population. However, the total expenditure at mobile advertising (of which mobile LBA is a part) is growing in the Netherlands. PricewaterhouseCoopers measured a growth from € 2 million in 2003 to € 28 million in 2007 (Media Outlook 2008-2012).
The innovation adoption theory (Rogers, 1995) provides valuable insights into the process by which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time, are transferred and adopted among the members of a social system. Rogers defines adoption as ‘‘. . . the decision to make full use of an innovation as the best course of action available.’’ Adoption of innovations in an organization implies that adoption also occurs within the organization, at the individual level. Frambach e.a. (2002) refers to this as intra-organizational acceptance. This kind of organizational acceptance is applied to this research since it aims to create insight into the individual acceptance of key persons within an organization. Rogers describes the decision-making process in five stages, presented in the table below. The penetration of mobile LBA can be placed into the second stage: persuasion.
Stage Description
Knowledge An organization learns about an innovation, its functions and functioning principles. Prior experience and personal characteristics will influence this knowledge. Organizations starts to build their beliefs about the innovation based on their knowledge.
Persuasion Organizations develop their beliefs about and attitude towards innovation based on their knowledge built in the earlier stage. They form a favorable or
unfavorable attitude towards the innovation based upon (a) relative advantage (b) compatibility with values and beliefs of individuals in the social system, (c) complexity in understanding how to use the innovation, (d) trialability resulting in less uncertainty and (e) observability of the innovation results.
Decision Organizations will make the decision to adopt or reject the innovation based on their emerging attitudes. Rogers states that most organizations will try out the innovation on a partial basis first. If they find a certain degree of relative advantage then they will develop intentions to actually adopt the innovation. Implementation Organizations finally adopt or reject the innovation. They may still have a certain
degree of uncertainty about the expected consequences of the innovation and continue to actively collect information about the innovation applications. Confirmation Organizations evaluate the adoption of the innovation based on satisfaction with
their usage experience and decide whether they will continue to use the innovation in the future.
Table 3: Stages of the adoption process (Rogers, 1995)
The greater the relative advantage of mobile LBA (economic, social prestige, convenience etc.), the more rapid its rate of adoption is likely to be. Compatibility refers to the fit of mobile LBA in the values, past experiences and needs of organizations. The complexity in understanding how to use the innovation is the degree to which mobile LBA is perceived as difficult to understand and use. Since trialability and observability could not be measured at this moment, the attitude from organizations
towards mobile LBA is not yet mature. Therefore the adoption of mobile LBA is placed in the persuasion phase. This is supported by the behavior of organizations nowadays since they acknowledge the rise of social media within businesses, expressed by the growth of online web care by companies like HEMA and The Phonehouse. These companies use Twitter, Facebook and other social media to interact with their customers and offer them advertisements as well. However, they do not take location sharing into account yet.
The acceptance of mobile LBA by organizations in the Netherlands is about to cross the chasm, as identified by Moore (1999). Moore takes the diffusion of innovations theory from Rogers and argues that there is a chasm between the early adopters of the product and the early majority. The early adopters consist of technology enthusiasts and the early majority is pragmatists. These two groups have very different expectations, which should be explored and answered with techniques to successfully cross the chasm. Relevant issues are choosing a target market, understanding the whole product concept, positioning the product, building market strategy, choosing the most appropriate distribution channel and pricing.
Moore’s theory typically applies to discontinuous innovations for which mobile LBA is a good example because it forces a significant change of behavior by the customer and organizations. We conclude that Dutch organizations are in the phase of early adopters but have not crossed the chasm yet. Therefore, it needs more growth and proves itself in local experiments like Profitbird in the city of Groningen. Another example is ‘feest.je’, a Dutch company which offers check-in possibilities and is active in several Dutch cities. They introduced in December 2010 a feature deals, which is used by a growing amount of Dutch companies. When these services become more successful, mobile LBA is expected to become within a short amount of time mainstream since the early majority can be reached.
Figure 8: The chasm in the technology adoption lifecycle (Moore, 1999)
5.2.1 Attitude towards adoption of mobile LBA
The presented quantitative and qualitative information from chapter 4 can be classified in three categories. These categories should be seen as characteristics of organizations that drive innovation adoption, proved by extensive research (Frambach e.a., 2002).
Organization size Organization structure Organization innovativeness
Organization size has repeatedly been found to influence the decision to adopt innovation. Usually, size is found to be positively related to innovation because larger organization feels a greater need to adopt innovation in order to support and improve their performance. On the other hand, smaller organizations are more flexible and innovative, expressed in a positive attitude towards new products or services. These relationships are influenced by other variables like strategy and culture (Kennedy, 1983).
Organization structure has been found to either facilitate or inhibit the adoption of innovation. More formalized and centralized organizations (large firms) are less likely to initiate innovation adoption decisions but are better equipped to implement an innovation. The opposite holds for organizations that are highly complex or specialized (Zaltman e.a., 1973).
The degree on innovativeness within the organization influences the attitude towards the adoption of new products or services. This is positively related to the strategy of an organization when they have an aggressive, innovation-oriented marketing strategy (Morisson, 1996).
The theory above will be applied to the researched organizations for which the adoption of mobile LBA is compared with the presented three characteristics. The data are composed of the results from surveys and qualitative interviews while conducting these surveys (as shown in table 1, section 4.2). The adoption of mobile LBA was measured by the commitment for participation in Profitbird. Size is measured by the number of establishments and amount of personnel, structure is measured on a Likert-scale (1= very decentralized, 5 = very centralized) en innovativeness is based on the output from qualitative interviews. The results are presented in the table below.
Organization Size Structure Innovativeness Adoption of mobile LBA
Restaurants Large Neutral Neutral Positive
Supermarkets Medium Very decentralized Low Negative
Clothing Small Neutral Neutral Positive
Horeca Medium Centralized High Positive
Sporting goods Medium Neutral Neutral Positive
Interior Large Centralized Neutral Negative
Electronics Large Centralized Neutral Negative
Hairdressers Small Very decentralized Low Positive
Books Large Centralized Low Negative
Warehouse Large Very centralized Low Negative
Table 4: Influence characteristics organizations on adoption of mobile LBA
The theory about size, structure and innovativeness is confirmed by the empirical findings. From the table can be derived that four out of five large organizations are negative towards the adoption of mobile LBA. These large organizations have an average structure that can be characterized as centralized and have a neutral/low innovativeness. Four out of five small and medium sized enterprises are positive towards the adoption of mobile LBA. These organizations have an average structure that can be characterized as decentralized and have a neutral/high innovativeness.
5.3 Conclusion
It became clear that organizations are more and more developing a mobile strategy but the commitment and resources are still limited. There are also barriers like a lack of understanding about the medium by key people in the company.
Dutch organizations can be placed in the persuasion phase, where organizations develop their beliefs about and attitude towards innovation based on their knowledge. They form a favorable or unfavorable attitude towards the innovation based upon variables as relative advantage and complexity in understanding how to use the innovation. These organizations are about the cross the chasm within the phase early adopters of the product life cycle. When they do so, mobile LBA is expected to become within a short amount of time mainstream since the early majority can be reached.
This research confirms that organization size, organization structure and organization innovativeness are likely to be determinants of the adoption of mobile LBA. The conclusion can be drawn that large organization with a centralized structure are negative towards the adoption of mobile LBA. Small and medium sized enterprises with a decentralized structure are positive towards the adoption of mobile LBA. A high innovativeness has a positive influence towards the adoption of mobile LBA.
