Critical Success Factors of Location-Based Services

Location-based services evolved with the advancement in mobile technology and wireless technology. Researchers have studied location-based services in terms of privacy, trust, and user acceptance. Statistics suggest the percentage of location-based services users is still relatively low. Therefore, the main objective of this study was to gain a comprehensive and holistic understanding of the critical success factors of location-based services. The electronic brainstorming approach was used to gather the opinions of an expert group of practitioners, researchers, and users on the critical success factors of location-based services. Through grouping similar factors together based on past literature, 15 categories of critical success factors were developed. These 15 categories were ranked and rated according to importance. The results showed that speed, real-time or up-to-date information, cost, usefulness or benefits, and simple or ease of use are the five most important critical success factors. The results of this research highlight potential areas of research, and research and development. The results of this study also provide guidelines for practitioners to create a competitive location-based services strategy to increase consumer adoption. INTRODUCTION In today's fierce market competition, businesses are constantly on the outlook for new opportunities or strategies to attract more customers and increase profits. Mobile phones are getting smaller, having more functionality, and becoming more affordable. The advancement in mobile technology coupled with the advancement in wireless technology that provides continuous Internet connectivity have open up new opportunities for businesses to leverage on, such as location-based services. Location-based services use the location of mobile device users to bring location-specific and personalized services and information to them. These services allow users to receive up-to-date information about their surroundings, save time and money, and make better, informed real-time choices (Kaplan, 2011). It also enables businesses to build and maintain customer relationships, increasing their profit gain potential. There have been arguments that location-based services are just a hype. In April and May of 2011, Pew Internet Research conducted a national telephone survey to 2277 adults regarding the usage of mobile location-based services and found that only about 28 percent of all American adults use location-based services (Zickuhr & Smith, 2011). for location-based services to be a reality, than just a hype, it needs a huge user base at each location, repeated check-ins, and repeated participation from businesses (Treadaway, 2010). researchers need a better understanding of factors that can increase the location-based 2 services user base. This study …