Exploring Consumer Attitudes towards Mobile Music Services

The emerging capabilities of mobile telephony provide a promising alternative commerce channel, contributing to the configuration of the appropriate conditions for the forthcoming communication industry convergence. Elaborating on the rapid evolutions on the mobile commerce landscape, this paper investigates consumer attitudes towards mobile music services through an exploratory research approach conducted in Finland, UK and Greece. The objective of this study is to support content providers and mobile operators to capitalize on the unexplored marketing challenges existing in the virgin territory of mobile music. The findings indicate that content-centric criteria (i.e., sound/image quality and content variety) are the most critical success factors for mobile music diffusion and consumer adoption, while content personalization capabilities, ubiquity, and easy-to-use interfaces constitute for the consumers the most desired features of a mobile music application. Significant differences were observed between consumers willing to adopt mobile music services and those that are not, in terms of the importance they assign to specific mobile music application selection criteria and features. Finally, significant differences were observed between the investigated countries in terms of consumersïFFD willingness to adopt mobile music services