Mobile technologies have increasingly become an integral part of individuals' work and personal lives. Although research exists in this domain, most of it focuses on the customer's adoption factors rather than assessing the value or the impact of mobile business (m-business) usage on firms. The present study fills this gap in the literature through the analysis of the value m-business can provide for firms. The Technology-Organization-Environment framework, Diffusion of Innovation theory and Resource-Based theory ground this research's conceptual model for assessing the post-adoption stages of usage and value of mobile business from an organizational perspective. The value of m-business includes the impact on marketing and sales, internal operations, and procurement. This research uses a mixed method research design; interviews are first conducted to develop a model to assess m-business usage, and survey data collected from 180 Portuguese organizations is then used to test the proposed model. The results indicate that seven of the nine proposed antecedents of m-business usage are significant, and that m-business usage has a positive and significant relationship with m-business value. Furthermore, the three dimensions of value (marketing and sales, internal operations, and procurement) are significant, but only two of them have direct positive impacts on firm performance. Implications of these findings for practice and research are discussed.

No abstract

Mobile business (m-business) creates new business opportunities. Yet, existing research focuses on customer adoption factors rather than an assessment of the value of m-business for organisations. This study fills this gap through the development of a conceptual model of m-business value at the organisational level, which is grounded in the technology-organisation-environment (TOE) framework and the resource-based view (RBV) theory. The model suggests seven determinants of m-business use and value: technology readiness, firm size, managerial obstacles, competitive pressure, regulatory environment, partner pressure, and mobile environment. M-business value is a second order construct comprising the impact on downstream dimensions (e.g., sales support, customer service, market growth), on internal dimensions (e.g., internal processes, staff productivity), and on upstream dimensions (e.g., procurement, coordination with suppliers). This study develops an instrument to assess m-business usage and value. Data collected from 111 professionals is then used to test the proposed instrument. Implications and contributions are discussed.

Mobile technology innovations have allowed organizations to expand the way they conduct business. Organizations are increasingly leveraging the unique value propositions of mobile business (m-business) in terms of convenience, ubiquity, unison, and personalization to improve business performance and support their value chain activities. Building on a process-oriented model of IT business value, we propose that m-business value is derived from its perceived impacts on the value chain activities. This article addresses the following research questions: (i) How does m-business create value for organizations? and (ii) Which are the organizational impacts of m-business? Through qualitative research involving in-depth interviews with experts, this article defines m-business value by clarifying the impacts of m-business usage at the organizational level. While the interview results show that m-business does have impact on marketing and sales and internal operations, its impact on procurement requires further research. The findings extend existing literature by proposing a definition of m-business value, based on a more in-depth understanding of m-business impacts on firm performance, highlighting new m-business value components, and developing a conceptual model of m-business value assessment in which task requirements and business characteristics may play a moderating role. The implications of these findings on future research are discussed.