A socio-cultural analysis of the present and the future of the m-commerce industry

With high optimism, the third generation mobile communication technologies were launched and adopted by telecommunication giants in different parts of the globe - Hutchison 3G in the UK, Verizon in the USA and NTT DoCoMo in Japan. However, with an uncertain and turbulent social, economic and political environment, and the downturn in the global economy, difficult conditions are pronounced for the initial promises of m-commerce technologies to be fully realized. The causes for this, determined so far, have been largely of a technical nature. In this chapter, we shift the focus of analysis from a pure technical approach to a socio-cultural one. The basic premise of the chapter is that cultural variations do play a very important part in shaping potential consumers' choice, belief and attitude about m-commerce services. We believe that to be an important way for the m-commerce industry to fulfill its potential.