Mobile Semantics: Defining Concepts and their Interrelationships

Abstract

As service offerings and technologies constantly develop there seems to be confusion over what we are actually talking about when we talk about mobile services. A requirement for constructing an organized body of knowledge in a specific area of research is the clarity of its basic concepts. Often, we are not specifically interested in defining things but to examine and discuss the subjects of our primary interest we need unambiguous and shared definitions of our key concepts. Although many relevant concepts undoubtedly have clear definitions in the minds of experienced scholars working in the field of mobile offerings, for some reason these definitions are not well articulated or easily found in published form. With a focus on business‐to‐consumer mobile offerings, this paper addresses this lack of shared definitions. As the main contribution definitions of business‐to‐consumer mobile services and mobile content services are introduced, existing definitions for related concepts are presented and the nexus of concepts is outlined. The discussion is conceptual in nature and draws from marketing and information systems literature.

Keywords:

• mobile services
• mobile content services
• definitions

Notes

1. The term ‘mobile offerings’ is used in this paper as a general term to describe all things offered in a mobile environment.

2. Baldi and Thaung (2002) divide consumer mobile services into pure entertainment and entertaining services. In their taxonomy pure entertainment consists of ‘applications solely accredited to the entertainment industry’ and entertaining services are services ‘that serve a second purpose beside pure amusement (e.g., educational or informational)’.