A review for mobile commerce research and applications

Although a large volume of literature is available on mobile commerce (m-commerce), the topic is still under development and offers potential opportunities for further research and applications. Since the subject is at the stage of development, a review of the literature on m-commerce with the objective of bringing to the fore the state-of-art in m-commerce research and applications will initiate further research on the growth of m-commerce technologies. This paper reviews the literature on mcommerce and applications using a suitable classification scheme to identify the gap between theory and practice and future research directions. The 149 m-commerce articles are classified and the results of these are presented based on a scheme that consists of five distinct categories: m-commerce theory and research, wireless network infrastructure, mobile middleware, wireless user infrastructure, and m-commerce applications and cases. A comprehensive list of references is presented. We hope that the findings of this research will provide useful insights into the anatomy of m-commerce literature and be a good source for anyone who is interested in m-commerce. The paper also provides some future directions for research. D 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.