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E-commerce’s emergence in the late 1990s revolutionized virtually all activities related to product/service and information exchanges in national economies (Pham et al., 2011). The core feature of e-commerce is that in a specific place, for example, at home or workplace, with just a desktop computer connected to the Internet, consumers can interact with websites of retailers or service providers to search for necessary information or purchase desired products or services (Yang et al., 2004). This is completely different from the traditional business environment where transactions and exchanges of products, services and information are conducted primarily via interactions between customers and the company's employees (Jun et al., 2004; Pham et al., 2018).
With mobile technologies’ rapid development involving wireless networks and Internet infrastructure, e-commerce has been evolving into a new, more significant phase: mobile commerce (Gupta & Vyas, 2014; Zott & Amit, 2012). The unique feature of mobile commerce (m-commerce) is that customers are not limited by space and time. Using only a mobile device (for example, a smartphone or tablet) connected to the wireless Internet, consumers are able to search for relevant information or conduct transactions related to purchasing products or services at their leisure (Chong et al., 2012). As a result, mobile commerce worldwide is growing at a high rate and is projected to reach about $420 billion in sales in 2021 (Statistia, 2019).
Mobile commerce can be of great benefits to businesses, customers, and governments (Swilley et al., 2012). For businesses, mobile commerce can help streamline and reduce physical offices or branches used to provide services to customers (Jun & Palacios, 2016). This can help save operating costs for businesses (Lin et al., 2011). Armed with only a wireless Internet-connected mobile device, customers can search for relevant information or make purchases directly through companies or retailers' websites (Chong et al., 2012).
In addition, mobile commerce can help businesses integrate more deeply into the global economy as the world increasingly becomes flatter where people can connect with each other anytime at anywhere (Wu & Chuang, 2010). Businesses can sell products/services produced in one country to customers in another without having their physical presence in the foreign country (Javalgi et al., 2005). Further, due to the fact that mobile device users increasingly have access to social networks to share their preferences about products and services, mobile commerce can help businesses implement more effective advertising and promotion programs towards different groups of customers on social networks while keeping costs down (Wei et al., 2009).
For governments, the emergence and development of mobile commerce serve as the catalyst that helps the government become more digitized (Trimi & Sheng, 2008). This allows a government to evolve into a smart one. So digitized, its functions and mandates for creating economic and legal information technology (IT), as well as Internet frameworks, provide favorable conditions for more actors in the economy to exchange information, conduct business activities, and trade products/services in the most convenient way at anytime, anywhere (Hung et al., 2013). In other words, the development of mobile commerce can promote the development of the government and, in turn, support mobile commerce to reach its full potential, ultimately creating value for all entities involved in mobile commerce (Abu-Shanab & Haider, 2015).