Effect of User Control on Customer Emotional Value in M-Marketing and M-Commerce Context

Abstract

This research discusses about the Effect of User Control on Customer Emotional Value in M-Marketing and M-Commerce context. The main reason for this study is that customers in India still receive unsolicited and irrelevant messages through M-Marketing firms resulting in poor value creation amongst customers. The reason for existence of this problem is due to lack of user-control at customer end and poor implement of search based and location based M-Marketing & M-Commerce offers by the firms. Another reason for persistence of this problem is poor understanding of the customer profile, search pattern and location specific needs of customer resulting in sending irrelevant offers and schemes thereby leading to poor emotional value amongst M-Commerce customers. This problem is most evident when customers are looking for product or service at a specific location and based on certain context thereby leading to annoyance and discontentment. The problem is most visible when the customers are in urgent need of product or services at a reasonable price but are dumped with offers which are exorbitantly high priced and irrelevant. Hence, due to poor implementation of key features of M-Marketing and M-Commerce, the customer emotional value in customer has not gone up in India as projected by various market research agencies. This study proposes two conceptual model i.e. M-Marketing and M-Commerce model, for determining the emotional value in customer. The main objective of this study is to analyze the effect of User control on Emotional value creation directly and indirectly through search based and location based variables using partial least square path modelling method. The testing of hypothesis (H1 to H5) for goodness of fit of these two models was done through SMARTPLS path modelling software. Before studying the correlation between various latent constructs in both the models, the assumption of correlation i.e. normality and multi-collinearity of variables were tested to check for any correlation. Based on the analysis of the models, it can be stated that search based and location based M-Marketing constructs have partial mediation effect on M-Marketing Emotion Value along-with the direct effect of User Control on the latter. Similarly, in case of M-Commerce model, search based M-Commerce constructs have partial mediation effect on M-Commerce Emotion Value. But contrary to the general perception, the role of trust as a moderating variable on the relationship between User Control and Location based M-Commerce is found to be significant but with a negative value in case of M-Commerce model using the SMARTPLS path modelling. The indirect effect of User Control on M-Commerce Emotional Value is found to be not significant which indicates that LBMC is concerned with the utilitarian effect of M-Commerce rather than Hedonic (emotional) effect. But the direct effect of User Control on M-Commerce Emotional Value is still quite significant. Thus, the main theoretical contribution of this research is the effect of User-control on customer emotional value through search based and location based constructs of M-Marketing and M-Commerce. The main practical implication of this study is firms should implement and extend higher user control for reducing privacy concern and security risk resulting in higher emotional value in customers. In addition to User Control, further refining of information sent to customer through search based and location based parameters, will result in further enhancement of emotional value in customer. Therefore, it will be a win-win situation for both businesses as well as customers in the long run of business association.