What is m-commerce and what are some of the technological innovations that fall under this type of commerce?

Growing numbers of consumers already use it but may not realize it or they may not fully understand what m-commerce is or how it works. Given its sustained increased in usage in recent years, it is important to develop this level of understanding so that all of the advantages of m-commerce can be realized while its corresponding vulnerabilities are minimized. To this end, the purpose of this paper is to provide a review of the relevant industry and peer-reviewed literature to describe m-commerce as well as some of the technological innovations that support this commercial platform. Following this review, the paper presents a summary of the research and important findings concerning current applications of m-commerce and its future potential in an increasingly digital world.

Review and Discussion

Overview of m-commerce

When consumers use their smartphones at a point of purchase in retail establishments, they are engaging in a basic type of mobile commerce, or more commonly m-commerce. For instance, according to the straightforward definition provided by Yasar, M-commerce is the buying and selling of goods and services through wireless handheld devices such as smartphones and tablets. M-commerce is a form of e-commerce that enables users to access online shopping platforms without the use of a desktop computer (Yasar, 2020, p. 2). The global usage of smartphones has also experienced steady growth in recent years, and more than 25% of the worlds population had already used smartphones by 2016 (Ashraf et al., 2017), a percentage that increased to more than 79% of consumers worldwide by 2020 (Basit, Khalid and Maroof, 2022)....

Likewise, there has also been corresponding growth in the global m-commerce marketplace with sustained year-to-year increased having been reported by industries of all sizes and types (Ashraf et al., 2017).

Further, changes in consumer shopping habits have also fueled the growth of m-commerce. In this regard, Basit, Khalid and Maroof (2022) emphasize that, Shopping using mobile phones, in...

…banking and other uses that require verifiable identity information and encrypted communications for security (Mikesell, 2017). Similar technologies have also been used to migrate device-based apps to the cloud to facilitate m-commerce transactions (Gherari et al., 2018).

Conclusion

Noted author and futurist Arthur C. Clarke once observed that, Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, and it is reasonable to conclude that the m-commerce technologies that are being routinely used around the world today would appear as magic to consumers just a few decades ago. The research was consistent in showing that m-commerce, or mobile commerce, has continued to increase in popularity to the point where a majority of global consumers use it in their day-to-day lives. The research also showed that some of the technological innovations that support m-commerce include SMS, USSD, WAP 2.0 and the SIM Toolkit. Based on the foregoing review, it is also reasonable to conclude that continued improvements in the functionality of these technologies will drive additional usage of m-commerce for the foreseeable…