Classifying Mobile Services

Abstract

Mobile services differ from traditional services in their ability to provide service offerings regardless of temporal and spatial constraints. They are also different from traditional interpersonal services that are delivered face-to-face, or from other types of e-services, such as wireless online services, where the service delivery is linked to a specific fixed local area network or specific location. Although an increasing number of academic studies are starting to focus on mobile services from a service management perspective, rather than a technology perspective, formal classifications or categorizations of mobile services are still scarce. The aim of the paper is to develop a conceptual classification for mobile services that depicts the special nature of mobile services and gives indications how to categorize services from a customer centric perspective. The classification is based on the type of consumption, the context, the social setting, and the relationship and it represents aspects that influence the overall value of mobile services. These issues are described more in detail by breaking them down into classification grids that differentiate mobile services from one another by describing the aspects in a twodimensional way. We provide examples of existing mobile services in each classification grid.