Category: Mobile Commerce

Study sheds light on the factors that influence participation in mobile commerce

Market research firms iModerate and uSamp have released a new study concerning consumer motivations and preferences when it comes to mobile commerce. With mobile commerce beginning to become a very prominent part of society, it is becoming more important for businesses to understand why consumers choose to participate in mobile payments. The study aims to shed light on the various factors that influence whether a consumer with make a mobile purchase or not.

Many consumers want a better experience and more security

According to the study, customer experience and security are two of the most prominent issues that consumers are concerned with when it comes to mobile commerce. Because mobile commerce involves shopping from a mobile device, consumers are often confronted with websites and commerce platforms that are not optimized for mobile use. This leaves consumers with a poor experience and makes them unlikely to participate in mobile commerce in the future. Because mobile commerce deals so much with financial information, consumers also want to ensure that the platforms they use are secure and can protect their information from exploitation.

Consumers spend more through mobile commerce

The study also shows that consumers that participate in mobile commerce are more likely to spend money than those that do not. On average, these consumers spend $500 more than those that do not make mobile payments. The study shows that the majority of the money spent by those with smartphones has to do with entertainment. Tablet users tend to spend more money on books and similar media.

Consumers want to spend money more easily

Consumers are becoming more vocal about the improvements they want to see introduced to mobile commerce. The study shows that many consumers want to see better and less confusing features introduced into mobile commerce platforms. If platforms found a way to provide consumers with a better experience, users are expected to spend significantly more money through these platforms than they have in the past. Overall, the study shows that consumers want to be able to spend money more easily.

Scamming apps are plaguing users of the official Android application marketplace

Over 1,200 apps that were published onto the Google Play app store have been found to have been designed by “one click fraud” scammers that pose a serious mobile security threat to the Android users who use the applications.

There have been reports of victims being sent tremendous bills with a tiny amount of time in which to pay.

Some of the more common of the latest developments in mobile security scams that have occurred have involved bills of over $3,000 for what was called an annual subscription fee for an online adult video site, for which the users were given three days to pay. The latest scam variation takes more clicks than just one.

Over the last few months, mobile security threats through apps have evolved considerably.

According to Symantec researcher based in Japan, Joji Hamada, “The new type not only requires clicks, but it also requires users to send an email in order to register to become a member of a service, call a given phone number to acquire a password, and enter the password to log into the fraudulent site.” Hamada added that “That’s quite a bit of work to get through just to be scammed.”

However, the users that do successfully complete the process are slammed with these tremendous bills and short periods of time in which to pay. The scammers lure people to these apps featuring mobile security threats by doing what Hamada called “abusing the search function on Google Play,” which helps to make sure that those applications remain at the head of the search results.

He explained that Symantec carried out a test on the top 24 hits for a search at Google Play and found that out of that number 21 had some form of malicious mobile security threat connected to it.

According to a research report from a team at the Information Networking Institute from Carnegie Mellon University, the people who fall victim to one click scams don’t legally owe the money for which they have been billed, but they often pay it anyway because they are too ashamed to admit that they clicked on the link, which is usually for pornographic material.