Usage of established and novel mobile communication services: Substitutional, independent or complementary?
Torsten J. Gerpott (),
Sandra Thomas () and
Michael Weichert ()
Additional contact information
Torsten J. Gerpott: University of Duisburg-Essen
Sandra Thomas: BearingPoint GmbH, Communications & Content
Michael Weichert: Vodafone D2 GmbH, Consumer Web
Information Systems Frontiers, 2014, vol. 16, issue 3, No 11, 507 pages
Abstract:
Abstract Past scholarly empirical work on consumption interrelationships between various categories of mobile network operator (MNO) services is mainly limited to established short message service (SMS) and voice calling. Research exploring the interplay between the consumption levels of these two MNO-provided services and the use intensity of the novel offering to access the Internet via cellular radio infrastructures (= mobile Internet [MI]) is scarce. This gap is addressed in the present article. Based on a review of theoretical perspectives on consumption relationships across mobile services a positive interdependence between the use intensities of the two traditional services and MI access is hypothesized. In addition, supplementary hypotheses and research questions on associations between personal background characteristics, device type and MI adoption time of cell customers on the one side and levels of SMS and voice service usage on the other are developed. “System-captured” measures on individual real service consumption behaviors and the remaining study variables are extracted from customer and billing data archives of the German subsidiary of a large international MNO. Regression analysis of data from 8,312 customers of this MNO indicates that MI use intensity (average monthly volume of mobile IP traffic generated by a subscriber in May and June 2011) is positively related to monthly number of SMS sent and outbound mobile voice minutes. The interrelationships are highly statistically significant but the absolute effect sizes are merely of “small” relevance. Age and male gender are strongly negatively related to SMS consumption. Subscription to an unmetered tariff scheme for SMS and voice has substantial influence both on SMS sent and outgoing voice minutes. SMS use intensity appears to be less price sensitive than outgoing voice minute quantities. The study variables explain only a negligibly small proportion of variance in incoming voice minutes. Practical implications for MNO and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords: Consumer behaviors; Consumption interrelationships; Device types; Mobile Internet use; Mobile voice service; Short message service (SMS); Use intensity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)
Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s10796-012-9356-y Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:infosf:v:16:y:2014:i:3:d:10.1007_s10796-012-9356-y
Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/10796
DOI: 10.1007/s10796-012-9356-y
Access Statistics for this article
Information Systems Frontiers is currently edited by Ram Ramesh and Raghav Rao
More articles in Information Systems Frontiers from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().