Title: Perceived value of smartphones and tablets for mobile business in small and medium enterprises

Authors: Michael H. Quade; Uwe Leimstoll

Addresses: Institute for Information Systems, School of Business, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Switzerland ' Institute for Information Systems, School of Business, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Switzerland

Abstract: A majority of people in industrialised countries is using mobile devices like smartphones and tablets for private and business activities. The possibilities and opportunities of mobile business are considered in micro-enterprises as well as in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The question is: what is the perceived value of these devices? Do these devices have a positive impact on the productivity, flexibility and business processes of companies? The goal of this paper is to develop a model that helps to identify and explain this impact. The model is estimated using partial least square (PLS) structural equation modelling. The results show that the model has only a medium to weak predictive power when using the full data set. The reason is unobserved heterogeneity in the data. The model is becoming a high predictive power after applying a prediction-oriented segmentation (POS) with six segments.

Keywords: empirical study; small and medium-sized enterprises; SME; mobile business; e-business; perceived value; smartphones; tablets.

DOI: 10.1504/IJNVO.2017.088457

International Journal of Networking and Virtual Organisations, 2017 Vol.17 No.4, pp.317 - 340

Received: 10 Sep 2015
Accepted: 17 Feb 2016
Published online: 11 Dec 2017 *

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