Title: GTM-based service map to identify new service opportunities

Authors: Changho Son; Changyong Lee; Byungun Yoon; Yongtae Park

Addresses: Department of Weapon System Engineering, Korea Army Academy at Yeong-Cheon, 135-1 Changhari, Kokyungmeon, Young-Cheon, Gyeongbuk 770-849, Republic of Korea ' School of Technology Management, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology, UNIST-gil 50, Ulsan 689-798, Republic of Korea ' Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Dongguk University, Pil-dong 3 ga, Chung-gu, Seoul, 100-715, Republic of Korea ' Department of Industrial Engineering, Seoul National University, San 56-1, Shillim-Dong, Kwanak-Gu, Seoul 151-742, South Korea

Abstract: This study proposes a unique approach for developing and utilising generative topographic mapping (GTM)-based service maps to discover new opportunities of smartphone application service (SAS) with a case of App Store. Since GTM is a probabilistic approach of mapping multidimensional data space onto a low-dimensional latent space and vice versa, it contributes to the automatic detection and interpretation of derived service vacuums that must be intensively investigated to discover new opportunities of SAS. The main contributions and potential utilities of this study are threefold. First, this study theoretically contributes to new service development (NSD) research in mobile service area by proposing an intelligent approach. Secondly, this study is exploratory in that the inverse mapping of a GTM model is first proposed. Lastly, since all activities in the process could be computerised, researchers, engineers, managers, etc., who are interested in NSD can save considerable time and effort when uncovering new service opportunities in terms of managerial implications.

Keywords: new service opportunities; SAS; smartphone application services; GTM; generative topographic mapping; inverse mapping; service maps; smartphones; new service development; NSD.

DOI: 10.1504/IJMC.2015.067959

International Journal of Mobile Communications, 2015 Vol.13 No.2, pp.113 - 135

Received: 19 Oct 2012
Accepted: 10 Oct 2013

Published online: 12 Mar 2015 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article