the organisation of teaching and so improving the quality of teaching and learning within ouruniversities.

Evelyn McLellanSchool of Information and Communication Technologies, University of Paisley,

Paisley, PA1 2BE, UK

E-mail address: mcle-ci0@wpmail.paisley.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/S0268-4012(03)00057-4

ARTICLE IN PRESS

Mobile commerce: technology, theory and applications

Brian E. Mennecke and Troy J. Strader (Eds.); Ideal Group Publishing, 2003, 339pp., price $84.95hardback, ISBN: 1-59140-044-9

According to Mennecke and Troy, the primary objective of this book is to ‘‘provide a singlesource of up-to-date information about mobile commerce including the enabling technologiesy,conceptual and empirical research and theory regarding the expected impact of this technology onbusiness and consumers, and examples demonstrating state-of-the-art mobile commerceapplications and lessons learnt’’. This book represents a change in focus from many other bookscovering mobile commerce in that it is more than a ‘how to’ guide and offers an attempt to explorein some detail many of the important issues behind the actual technologies.The book is divided into three sections, namely, ‘Mobile Commerce Technology’, Mobile

Commerce Theory and Research’ and Mobile Commerce Cases and Applications’. The authorswho have contributed chapters to the sections include academics from around the world (e.g.USA, Australia, Greece, New Zealand, Finland, Netherlands) as well as practitioners fromcompanies that include Coca-Cola and NTT DoCoMo.In their introduction, the editors provide an excellent overview of the domain of mobile

commerce and provide a very useful model of mobile commerce which is an adaptation of thewell-known model of electronic commerce presented by Choi et al. (1997). Mennecke and Troyalso describe a framework for mobile commerce research which helps present a clear and usefulstructure around which the rest of the book is organised.The book contains 18 chapters that are generally clear and well written, although there is

obviously a range of different writing styles in a book of this nature. The chapter at the start of thebook by MacDonald about NTT DoCoMo’s i-mode provides an interesting insight into thehighly successful mobile commerce services in Japan, which are considered to be about 18 monthsto 2 years ahead of the rest of the world in this area.The section of the book that sets it aside from many other books on mobile commerce, is the

section on ‘Mobile Commerce Theory and Research’, and as such contains the most chapters.Important areas that are covered in this section are the use of a value chain model for

Reviews / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 355–359 357

ARTICLE IN PRESS

understanding the ecology of mobile commerce (R .ulke, Iyer and Chiasson), strategic and marketforces expected to be important in delivering mobile business services (Alanen and Autio) anduser privacy and ethical issues associated with location services (O’Connor and Godar). SectionIII contains some interesting case studies and applications such as Coca-Cola’s perspective onmobile commerce (Lee), how mobile advertising can be used for branding in a cross-mediapromotion for a Finnish chocolate bar that was tied to the premier of the movie ‘Tomb Raider’(Pura) and how mobile technologies can be used in the classroom (Dominick).Of particular use in the book is a glossary that makes the chapters more readable and easier to

understand. This will be of most use to the less knowledgeable reader who is using the book as ameans of learning more about mobile commerce. This subject is full of jargon and acronyms thatcan be daunting even to the knowledgeable reader.Mennecke and Troy claim to have ‘‘purposely tried to design the book to be useful to a wide

audience’’. They do appear to have achieved this aim in that there is certainly plenty of substancein the book to be of interest to a range of different academic audiences such as honours level andpostgraduate level (e.g. MBA, MSc) students who are studying mobile commerce either as part ofa specialist programme or as an option as part of an business/IT related programme. The book isquite expensive for many students, particularly undergraduates, but considering the number ofauthors involved and the scope of the book, it does represent a worthwhile investment. In terms ofa practitioner-oriented audience, they too will find the book useful in learning about how mobilecommerce might be useful to their own companies by learning about the experiences of others.One of the drawbacks of books covering areas such as mobile commerce is that they can date

very quickly, however, because this book focuses on areas such as theory and research, it willprobably still be useful and relevant for a number of years yet.In conclusion, this book provides a clear, well structured and interesting exploration of many

important issues relating to mobile commerce. The book is of sufficient breadth of scope to be ofinterest to a wide audience and is one of the first books to actually explore important issuesrelating to mobile commerce in any depth.

References

Choi, S. Y., Stahl, D. O., & Whinston, A. B. (1997). The economics of electronic commerce. Indianapolis, IN:

MacMillan.

M. StansfieldSchool of Information and Communication Technologies, University of Paisley,

Paisley PA1 2BE, UKE-mail address: mark.stansfield@paisley.ac.uk

doi:10.1016/S0268-4012(03)00058-6

Reviews / International Journal of Information Management 23 (2003) 355–359358