The adoption of mobile services: A cross service study

To pay back the investments made in telecommunication infrastructure, new mobile services must be developed, distributed and adopted. A requirement for developing the right services for the right user segments is an understanding of the users' adoption behavior. Applying a re-specified model of ICT-adoption, we study the adoption of text messaging, contact services, mobile payment services and mobile gaming in four individual surveys. Survey results are integrated and used to investigate how the adoption requirements of users differ across service categories and user segments. The final model shows good fit and explains more than 70 % of the variance in intention to use all four mobile services. The results support including elements of enjoyment and expressiveness in adoption models of all mobile services, and show surprisingly little support for subjective norm being important to users' adoption. As expected, we also find interaction effects of service category and user segments in the adoption model. Implications for the mobile services industry as well as for further research on users' adoption requirements of mobile services are suggested.