Building trust in mobile commerce: a technical report presented to the Department of Information Systems, University of Cape Town
Mobile commerce or ITHXll'Tlmerce is seen as the next technological innovation that will transform the marketplace. Despite the hype associated with m-commerce and the massive revenue predictions by research companies, current adoption figures by consumers seem to demonstrate a lack of enthusiasm for more advanced services. A key reason cited in the literature is a lack of trust Consumers regard ITHXll'Tlmerce as more risky than e-commerce. M-comrnerce transactions are often characterised by complex technology, anonymous vendors, lack of transparency and convoluted interactions between stakeholders. It is therefore no wonder that consumers are reluctant to adopt new m-commerce services. Trust becomes more important in situations of inaeased uncertainty, such as m-commerce. This research is the first South African study to investigate a model that incorporates trust and risk factors to explain adoption and usage of ITHXll'Tlmerce. The model is based on the existing trust literature, but complemented with variables that relate to the benefits of mobile technologies, namely Innovation Diffusion characteristics. Two research approaches were followed. Since m-commerce is relatively new in South Africa, qualitative analysis, by using focus groups, was conducted to explore how and why trust and risk influence m-commen::e adoption. This was combined with a more quantitative approach to investigate the relevance and importance of trust and risk issues on a population of potential 'early adopters'. The study provides several interesting findings. The study determined that personal characteristics significantly influence the perceived trustworthiness of the vendor, technology and the institutional framework. It was further established that these factors significantly influence overall trust perceptions and that trust and risk additionally influence intention to use m-commerce services. However, amongst early adopters, benefits were more important than both trust and perceived risks. This can be attributed to the high-risk tolerance of 'earty adopters' and it is possibly not generalisable to later adopters. However, the importance of trust cannot be underestimated, since most of the participants of this study were explicit about limits to their trust e.g. not being prepared to provide aedit card details or engage in high-value transactions. In conclusion, ITHXll'Tlmerce appears to have great prospec1s in South Africa. However, it is important that vendors unleash this potential by designing m-commerce services to reduce risk perceptions and inaease trust To this end, this research also suggests a number of practical vendor interventions.
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