Study On Membership In Mobile Commerce Value Chain

With the rapid development of mobile Internet, mobile commerce as a new industry with its unique advantages will be developed faster. Accordingly, the competition between traditional single mobile network operators gradually evolved into a more complex competition model within whole mobile commerce value chain. Maintaining good relationships with members in mobile commerce value chain is critical to the sustained and healthy development of mobile commerce. The objective of this study therefore is to examine the relationship establishment, relationship satisfaction, and relationship continuance between members in the mobile commerce value chain. Toward that goal, the theory of value chain and theory of relationship marketing were adopted from prior literature to theorize a new model of members'relationship within mobile commerce value chain. By doing so, the current study thus contribute to a better theoretical understanding of mobile commerce value chain membership as well as offer practical insights to the main mobile network operators for managing their valuable members'relationship. This study also can serve as a stepping-stone for further research in mobile commerce value chain field.First, the current study proposed a research framework of China' mobile commerce value chain based on the existing literature. In 3G environment, mobile network operators became the largest services provider in the mobile commerce value chain as they extend their business range to response outside competition. Due to consumers'strong demand of content and applications in 3G environment, the content providers became an important player in the new mobile commerce value chain. As the competition among the mobile commerce industry becoming more and more intense, mobile network operators, the leaders of mobile commerce value chain pay more attention to manage their relationships between content providers and other important members in their mobile commerce value chain.Thus, based on the characteristics of mobile commerce value chain, the current study mainly focus on the dynamic relationship building process of members in mobile commerce value chain:relationship establishment, relationship satisfaction, and relationship continuance.Based on the evolution game theory, this paper builds an evolution game model and discusses the optimal ratio of profit allocation between mobile network operators and content providers under condition of fixed joint profit and costs. Meanwhile, the article also discusses the optimal effort level of mobile network operators and content providers when the ratio of profit allocation decided. Specifically, it discusses the relationships among the effort level, contribution coefficient, ratio of profit allocation and coefficient of innovation costs in the condition of the joint profit maximum and individual profit maximum, respectively.Drawing on the previous research findings and encompasses specific characteristics of china's mobile business development status, the current study builds a structural equation model of relationship satisfaction between mobile network operators and content providers and empirical examined the model. The results indicated that mobile network operators'relationship investment positively influences content providers' economic satisfaction both directly and indirectly via content providers' trust. The communication between mobile network operators and content providers positively affects content providers'non-economic satisfaction both directly and indirectly via content providers'trust. Content providers'trust has positively influence on both mobile network operators' economic and non-economic satisfaction.Based on the relationship satisfaction research, we also establish a structural equation model of mobile network operators and content providers relationship continuance and empirical examined the model. The study found that content providers' dependence has positive influence on their relationship satisfaction and commitment; the shared value between mobile network operators and content providers positively affect content providers'relationship commitment; content providers'relationship satisfaction and commitment have positive influence on their relationship continuity with mobile network operators in mobile commerce value chain.