Critical Success Factors for Accelerating Mobile Commerce Diffusion in Europe

The rapid evolution of B2C e-Commerce alternative interaction channels (i.e., World Wide Web, Mobile Telephony and Digital TV) along with the continuously changing consumer behavioural patterns, has created a strong need for research tailored to the peculiarities and needs of the aforementioned emerging “distance shopping” channels. Stimulated by the these evolutions, this paper focuses on the investigation of consumer attitudes and behaviours against mobile commerce in Adam Vrechopoulos, Ioanna Constantiou, Nikos Mylonopoulos, Ioannis Sideris 478 Europe, towards identifying the critical success factors for accelerating its diffusion in this particular market. To that end, an online consumer survey ran in three European countries (Germany, Greece and Finland), constituting the research vehicle employed within an exploratory research design setting. Despite the fact that some considerable differences regarding mobile commerce adoption rates and consumer behavioural patterns were observed between the three investigated countries, it was found that mobile commerce penetration in Europe is on its infancy. However, improving mobile devices, designing more user-friendly shopping interfaces, developing effective applications and services, along with reducing prices, influencing opinion leaders and solving security, bandwidth and coverage problems, constitute the critical success factors for accelerating mobile commerce diffusion in Europe.