Giovanni Camponovo

Analyzing the M-Business Landscape

The m-business landscape never stops to change and the impacts on the mobile market are constant as players reposition themselves on the market according to the new opportunities and threats brought by rapid technological developments. This paper provides a conceptual tool to better understand this player arena and its objective is threefold. The first one is to analyze the role of the key actors using ontology for defining and assessing their business models. The second objective is to analyze and visualize the interaction of actors with each other from a value system perspective. The final objective is to evaluate and represent the dependencies of the actors, their strategies and their convergence or divergence on different issues by using an approach borrowed from policy making.RésuméLe paysage du commerce par terminaux mobiles (m-business) n’arrête pas d’évoluer et les acteurs présents sur ce marché ou champ de bataille ont de la peine à trouver leurs marques. Au dire de certains experts, les opportunités seraient nombreuses; l’histoire récente a rappelé que les menaces et les erreurs de gestion ne manquaient pas. Cet article suggère un outil conceptuel pour mieux appréhender le paysage du m-business sous différents angles. L’objectif est triple: il s’agit dans un premier temps d’analyser le rôle, la position et les perspectives des différents acteurs, à l’aide notamment d’une meilleure compréhension de leur modèle d’entreprise. Cette étude peut alors être prolongée par une analyse et une visualisation des systèmes de valeur et autres configurations d’activités, ainsi que de leur évolution. Le dernier objectif est de proposer quelques pistes pour évaluer et représenter les dépendances entre les acteurs et leurs convergences ou divergences, par rapport à quelques enjeux majeurs de ce marché.

Mobile customer relationship management: an explorative investigation of the Italian consumer market

Mobile customer relationship management (CRM) services seem to have all the characteristics commonly associated with successful mobile services and have accordingly been predicted to be among the most promising. However, real development of this sector has not been well explored so far, especially in relation to the actual supply of mobile CRM services to the public. The purpose of this paper is to reduce this gap by giving a first snapshot of the current development of the supply of mobile CRM services to consumers taken in the context of the Italian market. In order to do so, it firstly proposes a conceptual framework indicating the relevant aspects to investigate for assessing this kind of environments: the market, value propositions, actors and issues. Then it applies this framework to get an overview of the supply of mobile CRM services in Italy and provides some empirical insight about its current development obtained through an exhaustive survey of the current supply of 750 services from 353 firms.

Multi-issue actor analysis: tools and models for assessing technology environments

In strategic prospective, scenario thinking and negotiation processes, analysis of the actor game plays an important role. Such an analysis endeavours to rank the positions of stakeholders on many strategic issues, to assess potential convergences and divergences, and to anticipate coalitions and conflicts. Many models and tools that have been proposed and used for these purposes rest on matrix analysis, game theory and simulation. The present paper examines two of them: Mactor, a model of scenario planning, and a negotiation model derived from a political decision model based on game theory. This paper detects the flaws, similarities and differences of these approaches. Based on this comparison, a new model is proposed, with the advantages of both, but without their detected flaws. The model has been applied to an assessment of the public WLAN landscape. The paper sketches the first results which now should be integrated into a more sophisticated scenario analysis.

Negotiation in Technology Landscapes: An Actor-Issue Analysis

In large-scale negotiation problems and in assessments of complex and uncertain environments, it is vital to analyze the different stakeholders involved and to evaluate their positions in the negotiations. This paper extends a model, which merges previous multi-issue and actor-focused methods, based on power relationships between stakeholders and their ability to bargain in order to increase their utility. The model has already used for assessing a public WLAN landscape. The paper emphasizes the dynamic application of the model we developed for experimenting the negotiation evolution, shifting positions on some issues, and exchanging positions between actors. We also claim that such forecasting analyses of negotiation landscapes can be significantly improved using more appropriate visualization support. We propose new visualization tools for analyzing negotiation outcomes, representing negotiation landscapes, and applying what-if simulations, using passive influence, expected outcome and dissatisfaction, power distribution, proximity, and negotiation maps.

WLAN communities and Internet access sharing: a regulatory overview

The widespread adoption of wireless LAN has paved the way for the emergence of a compelling alternative to cellular networks for obtaining Internet access on the move. This has generated interesting opportunities to a variety of players to position in the mobile industry as wireless Internet service provider. Mobile network operators have insofar managed to take control of this sector through aggressive preemptive strategies. However, the rapid emergence of private WLAN networks and broadband Internet connections among households has raised the crucial issue of the sharing of Internet access through these networks. While most owners are unaware of this, some have consciously organized themselves to form free wireless communities aiming at providing free Internet access to members or even to the public. One fundamental concern about this conduct is whether these sharing practices are allowed from a regulatory point of view, determine the rights and obligations of the various parties involved and the sanctions that they may incur. The purpose of this paper is to investigate this important issue by considering two examples of regulation (the French and Swiss ones) and examines its implication for the various actors involved.

A proposal for a multi-perspective analysis of the mobile payment environment

Mobile payment is a very promising service, which is still in an early stage of development. Various solutions have been proposed with disparate success. This can partially be explained by the immaturity of the market, by the inexistence of proven business models for the various actors, and by the presence of several unresolved technological and business issues. As these aspects are all relevant and interrelated, the purpose of this paper is to discuss the importance of analyzing the mobile payment environment using multiple perspectives. We therefore present an original approach based on a technology environment assessment framework, which combines the appraisal of different perspectives: namely the market, the actors and the issues that characterize the environment.

Motivations of Hybrid Wireless Community Participants: A Qualitative Analysis of Swiss FON Members

The development of wireless communities has accelerated with the emergence of firms that incorporate this concept into a commercial business model. This hybrid community approach, where a company supports a community of individuals sharing their access points with each other, shows great promise to reach a global status as shown by the example of FON and the millions of members it has attracted. The key success factor for a community is attaining a critical mass of active members and it is thus vital to understand their motivations and develop suitable incentives to foster their participation. Because existing research is mostly limited to pure communities, this paper intends to study motivations of members in a hybrid community. To explore and understand them, it employs a qualitative approach based on 30 interviews with FON members in Switzerland. Tangible rewards appear to be the biggest motivation: the possibility to get free Internet access from other members is seen as the strongest incentive. Other utilitarian aspects like getting economical hardware or revenue sharing were also mentioned at times. A second strong motivation that emerges is the appeal of the concept of sharing, though members see it with various nuances like a reciprocal exchange, a purely altruistic act, or a way to better use existing infrastructure. Other less frequently cited motivations were idealistic (to promote free Internet or support alternatives to commercial operators) or related to technical interest and curiosity (to see how it works and experiment). On the other hand, social and intrinsic motivations are weak: members do not really feel part of a community as cooperative aspects are restricted to sharing resources and social interaction is limited. Finally, members are generally aware of potential risks such as security, abuse and legality, but they are not really concerned by them as the presence of a firm supporting the community plays a major role in reassuring members.

From Hype to Reality: A Case Study on the Evolution of the Swiss WISP Industry

The emerging use of WLAN technologies to provide WISP services in public locations has been a hot topic in the mobile industry as it threatened traditional mobile operator business models and their revenues. In contrast, some observers argued that this was simply an unjustified hype as WLAN would play a minor role or be integrated by mobile operators in their offerings. This paper studies the evolution of the WISP industry in Switzerland with two case studies. The first conducted in 2002 at the emergence of the industry to show how the hype surrounding WLAN resulted in the creation of a new industry attracting firms with various business models. The second conducted in 2006 after a period of consolidation to see how the industry evolved and whether the initial hype actually materialized.

A Model for Investigating Motivations of Hybrid Wireless Community Participants

The emergence of wireless communities offers an attractive alternative to operator-centric models for providing broadband wireless services. While the first attempts of purely self-organized communities have been limited by the difficulty of attracting enough members willing to share their resources with the community, newer hybrid wireless communities (where a firm supports and incentivizes individuals who share their infrastructure in exchange of being able to exploit the network) is developing rapidly. This difference suggests the importance of attracting and motivating members with suitable incentives. While this is widely recognized as a key issue, existing research is limited to pure communities and does not adequately cover hybrid communities. Our research project intends to address this shortcoming by focusing on hybrid communities, building an adapted theoretical model considering specific motivations and collecting empirical evidence using mixed qualitative and quantitative methods like content analysis, interviews and a large-scale survey. As this is a research-in-progress, only the first results of the project are shown, namely an adapted theoretical model and some evidence from a content analysis of hybrid wireless community forums. Participation appears to be motivated by tangible rewards (free network access, revenue sharing), social rewards (socializing with peers and feel part of a community), psychological rewards (pursuing idealistic goals and feeling competent) and intrinsic enjoyment, but hindered by participation efforts (monetary costs and required effort) and other concerns (security, legality and bandwidth use).

Motivations and Barriers for Participation in a Hybrid Wireless Community: The Case of FON

Wireless communities may be an intriguing alternative to 3G networks for offering mobile Internet, but their success depends on their ability to reach a critical mass of active members. The main issue is to understand what motivates and hinders people to join and participate in these communities to design suitable incentives to attract people and promote an active and enduring participation. This paper studies the factors that influence participation in FON, the largest wireless community, based on a theoretical model based combining research on technology adoption, self determination theory and prosocial behavior. The model is then empirically tested employing a mixed methodology drawing on 30 interviews and a survey of 268 members. Two types of participations are found to be driven by different motivations: participation by sharing, mainly driven by idealistic motivation linked to community values and reciprocity, and social participation is driven by social and technical motives like interacting and learning with other community members. On the other hand, utilitarian motivations do not have a significant effect on participation, even though they are deemed important for attracting members.