Mobile commerce is a product of the convergence of the two fastest growing
technologies of the modern era: cellular phones and the Internet (Attwood and
Duncan, 2000). It delivers electronic commerce capabilities into a consumer's
hand via wireless technology, that is an ability to perform a transaction using a
mobile device (cell phone, laptop, PDA), such as the cellphone banking
service. The cellphone banking service allows banking customers to perform
banking transactions directly on their cellphone, using either WAP or WIG
technology. Four big banks in South Africa provide the cell phone banking
offering to customers. Nedcor first launch the cell phone banking service and
other banks followed. Standard Bank launched the service in 2001 and thus
far only 28 000 customers have registered for the cell phone banking service.
The level of service adoption is very low, considering that there are 15million
cellphone subscribers in South Africa. Banks projected that the take-up would
be much higher than it currently is. For the purpose of this research study, the
Standard Bank's cell phone banking offering will be evaluated. The problem
area is that while Standard Bank launched the cellphone banking service in
2001, the consumer take up has been far lower than expected. Thus far, only
28 000 customers have registered for the service. No analysis has been
conducted at Standard Bank to understand the reasons behind the slow rate
of adoption by customers.
The objectives of the study are to:
o identify the factors that contribute to the non-adoption of the cell phone
banking service by customers
o identify factors that can increase the rate of service adoption and
therefore assist the banks in promoting the service to critical mass
o Establish the future of m-commerce in the banking industry.
- v -
A literature review has been conducted, where studies conducted
internationally in mobile banking space have been discussed. These are
studies conducted in Europe and the United States. The cell phone banking
adoption framework model has also been derived. In terms of the research
methodology, qualitative and quantitative research methods were both
employed to gather the required data. For the qualitative methodology,
interviews were conducted with the Standard Bank management team and a
questionnaire was administered. For the quantitative methodology a
questionnaire was designed and was used to gather the information from
Standard Bank customers.
The research results reveal that cellphone banking has not been widely
adopted, despite the rapid diffusion of cell phones in South Africa and the
popularity of cell phone functionality such as SMS. Factors likely to influence
adoption include trialability, relative advantage, and the customer need for
banking services from a cellphone and lower perceptions of technology risk. / Thesis (MBA)-University of Kwazulu-Natal, 2004.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:netd.ac.za/oai:union.ndltd.org:ukzn/oai:http://researchspace.ukzn.ac.za:10413/2272 |
| Date | January 2004 |
| Contributors | Thomson, Elza. |
| Source Sets | South African National ETD Portal |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Thesis |
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