Abstract:
The potential market for m-commerce now consists of 2.5 billion users worldwide. In addition, as with more traditional computer mediated environments, games are once again proving to be a dominant application. In particular, games are predicted to become the main driver in the m-commerce entertainment space. A key ingredient to the success of these wireless games is destined to be their quality. This is an area that has so far been neglected by literature. As a result, research performed in this thesis develops, validates and demonstrates the usefulness of an instrument that specifically evaluates the quality of wireless games. Data collected by the instrument is grounded in subjective impressions. However, this data can be applied in quantitative analysis for the production of wireless game metrics such as the Wireless Game Quality Index. The objectives of the thesis are carried out through the course of a two-phase methodology. The first phase involves qualitative methods and is primarily focused on the development of an instrument to measure the construct of interest, wireless game quality. The second phase involves quantitative methods and is primarily focused on examining the validity and demonstrating the usefulness of this instrument. A five dimension structure of wireless game quality is revealed along with a validated 23-item instrument. Furthermore, in the process of carrying out procedures to achieve the intended objectives, the study also reveals raw customer perceptions towards wireless games and insight into the competitiveness between three wireless games with regards to their quality.
