A Literature Analysis on the Adoption of Mobile Commerce Services by Individuals

Mobile commerce has been a huge success in terms of adoption by individuals in some markets like Japan, while, surprisingly, not as flourishing in others. Many studies have been conducted using traditional adoption models and theories (such as TAM) that mainly focus on technology aspects. A more complete understanding of the issue requires the need to integrate three roles that m-commerce users play: as technology users, network members and consumers. In this study, the paper reviews existing literature on individuals' voluntary adoption of mobile commerce services to highlight the adequacy/inadequacy of previous studies' coverage of these three roles. The paper observes that there is a lack of a complete understanding of mobile commerce adoption in the current literature. Several implications for future research and practice are discussed.