Consumer Value of Context Aware and Location Based Mobile Services

Abstract

Context aware services have the ability to utilize information about the user’s context and adapt services to a user’s current situation and needs. In this article the authors consider users’ perceptions of the added value of location awareness and presence information in mobile services. The authors use an experimental design, where stimuli comprising specific bundles of mobile services were presented to groups of respondents. The stimuli showed increasing, manipulated, levels of context-awareness, including location of the user and location and availability of buddies as distinct levels. Their results indicate that simply adding context aware features to mobile services does not necessarily provide added value to users, rather the contrary. The potential added value of insight in buddies’ location and availability is offset by people’s reluctance to share location information with others. Although the average perceived value overall is rather low there exists a substantial minority that does appreciate the added context aware features. High scores on constructs like product involvement, social influence and self-expressiveness characterize this group. The results also show that context aware service bundles with utilitarian elements have a higher perceived value than bundles with hedonic elements. On the basis of the different results some guidelines for designing context aware mobile services are formulated.

Exploration of Location-Based Services Adoption

“…De Vos et al (2009) investigated the use of information about a user's context in LBSs. They found that adding context aware features to mobile services, such as location or availability, did not provide added value to users as it was offset by a user's reluctance to share location information with others.…”

Mobile e-Services

“…(O'Grady, O'Hare & Collier, 2010) Addition of context-awareness to a mobile e-service should however be approached with caution; e.g. a study by de Vos et al (2009) on location based mobile services shows that simply adding context-awareness features to the provided service rather decreased the perceived value from a user perspective, as many users were reluctant to share context data such as location information. Privacy is of high concern when designing for context awareness.…”

Effects of Adaptivity and Other External Variables on Mobile Service Adoption

“…Similarly, there is a tradeoff between personalization and privacy issues in adaptive information access and such a tradeoff requires getting right balance without over profiling the users (Smyth, 2008). Vos et al (2008) developed an experimental design to figure out consumer value of location awareness and information presence in mobile services and based on experiment results, some guidelines that take into account privacy issues of consumers, consumer characteristics and concerns and service characteristics (utilitarian/ hedonic) were provided for context aware services providers. Park et al (2007) explored the effectiveness of adaptable and adaptive menus in desktop applications.…”