Consumer Adoption of Wireless Gaming Services

The evolution of wireless technology is creating vast opportunities for service delivery via hand-held devices. Of the various types of mobile services, the adoption and diffusion of mobile gaming seems to be the most widespread and is seen by many analysts to pave the way for other, more functional wireless services. This seems to be particularly true in Japan. However, contrary to the success of i-mode in Japan, American and European consumers have been more hesitant in adopting mobile services in general and mobile gaming in particular. Therefore, the current research aims to develop a conceptual framework for the adoption of mobile gaming, expanding traditional diffusion of innovation models with additional context-specific factors. In an empirical test of our conceptual framework, we employed conjoint analysis in order to generate a hierarchy of importance concerning the technological innovation attributes of mobile gaming services. Moreover, a choice simulation was conducted to evaluate combinations of technological attributes of mobile gaming offers. In addition to wireless technology characteristics, user characteristics were identified as adoption rates may differ across consumer segments. On the basis of cluster analysis, we identify three adopter profiles with regards to mobile gaming.