Carina Ihlström Eriksson

Business Models for M-Services: Exploring the E-Newspaper Case from a Consumer View

This article presents the consumer view of an innovative m-service, that is, the e-newspaper, which is published for a mobile reading device equipped with an e-paper display. The research question of this article is: What are the implications of the consumer view of future m-service innovation on business models? In this article, we present empirical results from an online survey with 3,626 respondents representing the consumer view. The factor analysis revealed three aspects of consumer preferences, that is, Ubiquitous access, Prestige of news source and Local anchorage and advertising. These were then correlated with media behavior and e-newspaper preferences to indicate three possible market segments. We then discuss the implications that these consumer views could have on developing new business models, followed by a comparison to earlier research. Finally, we propose an integrated e-newspaper business model framework consisting of three models, ubiquitous, local, and prestige.

Ubiquitous Advertising Challenges

The aim of this paper is to further explore new issues on advertising in ubiquitous information environments by theoretically and empirically discussing challenges of ubiquitous advertising. We have performed 15 interviews and 9 workshops with publishers and advertisers from the media industry. Our findings confirm previous research but also point out several additional challenging issues. We contribute to theory and practice by suggesting additional challenges for ubiquitous advertising regarding: 1) dynamic data exploitation, 2) real-time advertising adjustment (and channeling) to user behavior and preferences, 3) context adaptation and 4) user-advertiser relations.

Forming a Value Network - Analyzing the Negotiations Between Actors in the E-Newspaper Case

We have studied a two-year project aiming at exploring the potentials of the e-newspaper, i.e. a news service published with e-paper technology. Different actors have interests in this process, e.g. newspaper publishers, device producers, readers and advertisers. These actors are forming value networks by negotiations of interests and positions. The contribution of the paper is twofold: firstly we show how the value network created around e-newspaper is dependent on the convergence of different actors and their interests; secondly our theoretical contribution is to show how Actor Network Theory (ANT) can be used in combination with other theories - in this case genre theory - to analyze emergent value networks. ANT captures the general process of how the value network takes form, while genre theory captures the domain specific context of e-newspapers, and how this structures negotiations between different stakeholders who want to form the e-newspaper genre.

Introducing the e-newspaper: Identifying initial target groups

Abstract This article investigates how audience groups differ with respect to the adoption of new media services. The authors expand the existing framework of early adopters, which is heavily directed towards the technological aspects of a product, by including users that are more interested in the social and content-related aspects of media services. The objective is to identify and explore important audience groups that can be used as initial target groups for the introduction of the e-newspaper (a newspaper published on e-paper technology). Data was collected from in total 2976 respondents through the web sites of three Swedish newspapers.

Multi-users and multi-contextuality: a mobile tourism setting

This paper reports from an initial stage of a Swedish project concerning mobile IT support for tourism. From three workshops with actors within the tourism sector we identified barriers and challenges in designing IT support for all phases of the tourist life cycle. Thereafter we designed and evaluated a mobile tourism guide in real life setting with six different user groups. The research question of this paper is: What factors influence the design of mobile services to be used by multi-users in multiple contexts? The initial findings show that indeed there are several design challenges regarding e.g. a) the visibility of the content of the screen when multi-users are simultaneously using the service, b) the audibility of the speaker voice in the service when used in a surrounding with traffic noise, c) providing optional designs for different context, i.e. indoors/outdoors etc, and d) providing personalization options for different group sizes.

The vision of ubiquitous media services: how close are we?

The high penetration of mobile devices implies that we are closing up to the vision of ubiquitous media environments. This paper reports from a broad survey about barriers, use patterns, and motivations for using mobile media services. The aim is to contribute to the understanding of mobile service adoption process by studying users in different phases of the adoption process. The findings imply that mobile services are still not adopted and ubiquitously ingrained in use patterns. There is still a long way to go.

Designing ubiquitous media services: exploring the two-sided market of newspapers

The two-sided market of newspapers with its two customer groups, readers and advertisers, is changing due to digitalization. This former stable and profitable market has lately suffered from both decreasing subscription and advertiser revenue. In this paper we use the term ubiquitous media environments to represent the vision of future media environments enabling device independent mass-scale distribution of ubiquitous media services in integrated infrastructures. We build upon a two-year action research project where researchers worked together with the Swedish newspaper industry to envision future ubiquitous media services and explore the following research question: how can ubiquitous media services be designed to leverage and balance value in a two-sided market? Five examples of ubiquitous media services were developed in collaboration and thereafter evaluated. These services were then illustrated in movie clips to trigger discussions on how ubiquitous media services can be designed. Drawing on the value aspects of ubiquitous media services from an advertiser and reader point-of-view and the platform owner role of the newspapers in a future ubiquitous media environments, we describe and discuss how ubiquitous media services can be designed to leverage value for advertisers and readers, and how newspaper organizations can strategize ubiquitous media environments.

A user driven design approach to creating UGC services --- challenging the newspaper industry

This paper presents a user driven approach to creating user generated content services together with newspaper representatives and researchers in a Living Lab setting. Two cases are discussed, one with creating city district blogs and one with creating a site for un-employed youth. In each case both situated and distributed design activities were conducted, and the paper discusses the challenges with this approach. As the newspaper industry traditionally designs their services in-house from their own ideas and thereafter tests them with their readers, a user driven approach by readers was very challenging. However, the newspaper representatives also found it rewarding to embrace their ideas. The participating readers were very active in the situated activities but only a few continued the same activity online. The paper concludes by proposing a model for how to view the changing role of a researcher or facilitator in these types of setting.

Social Aspects Influencing Relationships in Digital Innovation Networks -- The Smart Lock Case

Digital innovation processes are becoming more and more networked, where actors are growing dependent on each others competences, resources and knowledge. In networks developing digital innovation, actors need to identify, mobilize, and integrate diverse and heterogeneous knowledge resources to be able to innovate successfully. Social aspects seem to be important at the boundaries of communities where heterogeneous actors connect, negotiate, and adjust to each others perspectives. The aim of this paper is to explain how social aspects influence changes in relationships in digital innovation networks. A case study approach was selected to study events involving multiple actors in an innovation and development project aimed at introducing technology that aids elderly, home care personnel and next of kin by improving the management of home care visits. We describe how social aspects such as trust, interest, and commitment among actors influence the changes in relationships.