Mobile and Context-Aware e-Commerce: Issues, Challenges and Research Directions

Costas Vassilakis, George Lepouras, Spiros Skiadopoulos
Journal of Electronic Commerce in Organizations, Special Issue Editorial Preface

Abstract:
Electronic commerce, nowadays, is trying to extend its target audience and elevate the quality of services offered to end-users. Two important directions towards meeting these goals are the embracement of mobile users, whose number grows following the advent of communication technologies, and the inclusion of context-aware features in the delivered services to improve the efficiency of the dialogues between users and systems. The context taken into account may involve characteristics regarding the human user, the geographical location and the time of access, the devices employed to access the service, the network through which the user communicates with the system, the nature of the transaction carried out and so forth. It is clear that the development and successful operation of mobile and context-aware e-commerce introduce new challenges. In order to tackle such challenges, new methodologies, tools, architectures and platforms should be made available to assist analysts, designers, developers and operators in handling the various phases of the Mobile and Context-Aware E-Commerce Services (MCACS) lifecycle.

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