The Research on the Key Success Factors of Mobile Internet with Interpretative Structural Modelling

doi:10.4236/ib.2013.53013

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iBusiness, 2013, 5, 107-112

http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ib.2013.53013 Published Online September 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ib) 107

The Research on the Key Success Factors of Mobile

Internet with Interpretative Structural Modelling*

Jiangping Wan1,2, Yahui Zhu1, Lianyu Liang1

1School of Business Administration, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China; 2Institute of Emerging Industrializa-

tion Development South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.

Email: [email protected], zhu yahui0819@q q.com, ja [email protected]

Received August 3rd, 2013; revised August 25th, 2013; accepted Aug ust 31st, 2013

which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

ABSTRACT

Today mobile Internet is a rapidly rising area. How to deal with the disruptive transition? This paper is intended to

study the success factors of mobile Internet with grounded theory and it is the result that 17 success factors are iden-

tified. Then the following top 10 key success factors are found out through the questionnaire: the user traffic and

scale, product and service innovation, keen market environmental sense, the user experience and business model in-

novation, core technology, the development of mobile terminals, e-commerce and online payment services, custom-

ized services and applications of cloud computing and big data. Finally, interpretative structural modeling (ISM) is

applied to analyze the relationship among the key success factors and the root key success factors of mobile Internet

were figured out, as they are product and service innovation, keen grasp of market environment, the user experience and

core technology. The results will be enlightened for the ente rprises of mobile Internet, mobile phone manuf acturers and

operators.

Keywords: Mobile Internet; Key Success Factors; Grounded Theo ry; Interpretative Structural Modeling (ISM)

1. Introduction

As an emerging market, there is no stable development

model of mobile Internet. However, it is necessary for

the mobile Internet to find out its key success factors to

continue the healthy development, which relates to its

success or failure. The characteristics of the mobile In-

ternet include: quickly technological change, short prod-

uct life-cycle, fast improvement of product performance

and technology etc., which make the analysis and eval-

uation of the mobile Internet difficult to be quantified. In

order to solve this problem, interpretative structural

modeling (ISM) is used in this paper.

This paper is organized as follows: introduction and

literature review are in the first, and then the research

design followed. After identifying the influence factors

of mobile Internet with Grounded Theory, the hierarchi-

cal structural relationship among the key success factors

(KSF) is analyzed with ISM, to find out the root success

factors and their influence relation.

2. Literature Review

Mary Meeker, titled the “queen of the Internet”, the ex-

ecutives of Kleiner Perkins venture-capital firm, said in a

speech at Stanford University recently that the global

mobile Internet traffic was growing so fast that it even

exceeded the Internet traffic of desktop system in some

areas. Besides, the mobile industry was still in the early

development stage with great potential [1]. The huge

market prospect of mobile Internet attracts the telecom

operators, terminal manufacturers, Internet companies,

systems integrators etc., leading to the flourish [2].

Kate Matsudaira said: You want to make sure that

APIs return quickly and do not block while waiting for

results, since mobile clients have a limited number of

connections, and design your APIs to allow clients to

request just the information they need [3]. Nafaa Jabeur,

Sherali Zeadaly, Biju Sayed argued that 1) Along with

PC functions, TV, games, and business services are

available through mobile devices, wherever and when-

ever a user might want them. 2) Mobile devices are read-

ily discoverable by nearby people and social services. 3)

Even more services are expected soon, along with nu-

*This research was supported by Key Project of Guangdong Province

Education Office (06JDXM63002), NSF of China (70471091), and

QualiPSo (IST-FP6-IP-034763).

The Research on the Key Success Factors of Mobile Internet with Interpretative Structural Modelling

108

merous challenges and questions about privacy and data

security [4].

Nicholas C. Zakas argued that the best way to combat

latency is to use as few HTTP requests as possible for a

website or application. The overhead of creating a new

request on a high-latency connection is quite high , so the

fewer requests made to the Internet, the faster a page will

load [5]. Iris Junglas and Jeanne Harris argued that 1)

The usage of consumer devices and applications in the

workplace is a global phenomenon, however, it is by no

means a uniform one. Employees in Brazil, China, India,

and Mexico show disproportionally higher consumer IT

utilization rates in the workplace than any other markets

studied. 2) Employees in emerging markets believe that

using consumer tools for work boosts their empowerment

and, with it, their innovative nature—more so than em-

ployees in mature markets. 3) More employees in

emerging markets experience consumer IT as a produc-

tivity enhancer, making them more efficient and effective

at work [6].

The main steps of grounded theory are as follows [7]:

1) Theoretical sampling; 2) Collecting information; 3)

Coding information, and forming the concepts from in-

formation; 4) Continually comparing between data, and

between conceptions and between data and conceptions;

5) Forming theoretical conceptions, and establishing the

relationships between conceptions; 6) Building theory

and judging it.

ISM is based on the qualitative analysis, belongs to the

structure model and it can translate the fuzzy thought and

views into an intuitive model with good structure. ISM

work program can be div ided into the following steps: 1)

implement the ISM group, including technical experts,

coordinators and participants; 2) set the key issues; 3)

select the factors have influence on the key issues of the

system; 4) list the correlation of the factors; 5) establish

the adjacency matrix and accessible matrix, according to

the correlation; 6) breakdown the accessible matrix and

build the structure model; 7) establish the interpretative

structure model based on the structure model [8].

3. Research Design

Firstly, Grounded Theory is used to identify the factors

contributing to the success of mobile Internet, after read-

ing the relevant literature and reports about mobile In-

ternet in the recent years. Secondly, the hierarchical

structure relation among the key success factors of mo-

bile Internet is analyzed with ISM. And finally, the key

success factors and their relationship can be found out.

Other methods involved in the study include: 1) Depth

interview. Using Grounded Theory, interview the entre-

preneurs and experts in the field of mobile Internet with

in-deep situation, to confirm influence factors. 2) Ques-

tionnaire. Design the questionnaire with the possible in-

fluence factors and conduct the surveys with the senior

practitioners in mobile Internet industry, and cones-

quently the key success factors are acquired by statistical

analysis (Figure 1).

4. The Identification of the Influence Factors

of Mobile Internet with Grounded Theory

The influence factors to the success of mobile Internet

were identified with Grounded Theory. Taking depth

interviews, we understood the development status of mo-

bile Internet and found out the influence factors.

The five experts selected have the following charac-

teristics: 1) well educated, be able to accept and under-

stand new things quickly, and can express clearly; 2)

work in mobile Internet industry for more than 5 years,

and be familiar with the development of the Internet in-

dustry; 3) have a certain understanding of the related

technologies which mobile Internet need.

Through the continued comparison with the raw data

and the concepts, finally 17 factors were identified (Ta-

ble 1).

To be quantitative and standard, the influence degree

of the questionnaire is divided into five grades: critical,

serious, moderate, minor and negligible. Then critical

was given 5 points, serious 4 points, moderate 3 points,

minor 2 points, and negligible 1 point. We have sent 20

questionnaires altogether, and 16 recycled, all recycle

questionnaires were effective. The respondents include

experts in Op erational Department o f Tencent (8), Ningo

Students Studio (4) and the Department of Computer

Science, Georgia Institute of Technology in USA (4).

Through the questionnaire analysis, the descriptive

statistical analysis of each success factor was acquired

(Table 2).

Ten factors with highest mean value were renumbered

(Table 3). The top ten success factors of mobile Internet

L iterature a nalys i s

L itera ture a nalys isDepth inter view

Depth inter view

F in d the fa c tors th at c ontri bute to the s uc ce ss of mobi le

In terne t u si ng G roun ded Theory

Fin d the fac t ors th at c ontribute t o the suc ce ss of mobile

I nte rne t us ing Gr ounded T heory

Que st i on na i resurvey a n d d a ta a n a l ysi s

Questi onna ires urvey and da ta a na lysi s

F ind the key succes s fac tor s

Find the key success factors

Disc over the re la tionshipamo ng the keysuc ce ss factor s

Discover the re lationshipam ong the keysuccess fa ctor s

Conclusion

Figure 1. Research framework.

The Research on the Key Success Factors of Mobile Internet with Interpretative Structural Modelling

109

Table 1. The influence factors of mobile internet.

Factors Introductions

F1 User traffic and scale Whether mobile Internet profit model can be formed or not is depend on the user scale and the business flow.

F2 User consumption habit It is the key factors affecting the development of mobile Internet that cultivating the user consumption ha

it and using

habit.

F3 Product and service

innovation The formation of good profit model of mobile Internet enterprises, in essence, depend on the whether it can provide the

attractive, innovative and differentiated product or service to the customer.

F4 Keen market

environment sense

In the open market of mobile Internet, the market environment changes rapidly and the competition is fierce. So the

keen grasp of the market environment is benefit for the enterprises to build the differentiated profit model, according to

their development status, the ad v a n t ag e s a n d d i s a d va n t ages.

F5 Self-positioning of the

enterprise

While mobile Internet is in its infancy in China and many enterprises are still busy accumulating customers at the cost

of loss. Therefore, to explore the sustainable mobile Internet profit model is very urgent, and it needs mobile Internet

enterprises to position t hemselves correctly.

F6 User experience In order to promote the profit model innovation of and promote the prosperity of mobile Internet industry , the

enterprises need to be customer orientation, and f ocus on customer experi ence a n d b u s i n e s s model innovati o n .

F7 Innovation of business

model

With the maturity of mobile Internet, all kinds of business model will appear. As to the current business model, the

development of mobile applications shou ld be c on cen trated on. Business model is crucial for the sustainable

development and profit a b i l i t y of China’s mobile Internet industry in the future.

F8 Core technology As the leading force and driving force to the development of new med ia, te ch nol ogy is a basic question to mobile

Internet. Technology platform construction is the foundation of mobile Internet, relating to whether mobile Internet can

become the leading network.

F9 Provide both free and

value added service

Provides the basic services to the or din ary users for free, while offer value-added services to the VIP users with

differentiation demand. The former is more suitable for the current market env iro nment to meet the basic needs, and the

latter can meet the differentiated demand of users.

F10 High-tech technical

personnel High-tech technical personnel with strong recepti vity and core technology play a imp o rtant role in promoting the

development of the Internet.

F11 Development of the

mobile terminal The advantage of mobile Internet lies in how to make the best use of the mobile terminal. Mobile terminals exist in

everywhere in one’s life, as we have to use to mobile phone or tablet every day.

F12 Network Development In termsof the network, because of the enhancement of the wireless data transmission capacity, the mobile extending

feasibility of the application within the group is enhanced greatly, which makes the wireless big data transmission,

multimedia transmission possible.

F13 E-commerce and online

payment

E-commerce is the trend of the future, and with the development of electronic commerce these years, the real econo my

has been webified gradually. Mobile Internet era makes people’s life become more convenient, and may even overturn

the lifestyle of society.

F14 Business core

competitiveness

To promote the profit model innovation in mobile Internet, it is necessary for the enterprise to position correctly, to

focus on customer experience and business model innovation in the business, and to insist on cooperation, building a

good industry e c o s ystem.

F15 Customized service From the Internet’s profit model, it is clearly that only the products and service most closely to the users can be

charged.

F16 Available venture

capital Venture capital contributes to the development of high-tech industry, because it can reduce the risk in development of

mobile Internet enterprises.

F17 Application of Cloud

computing and Big Data Cloud computing and the term i nal will be the ser vers in the future, and mobile Internet enterprises can gradually

become a platform according to this strategy.

include: user traffic and scale, product and service inno-

vation, keen market environment sense, user experience,

business model innovation, core technology, develop-

ment of mobile terminal, e-commerce and online pay-

ment services, customized services and application of

Cloud and big data.

5. The Relationship among the Key Success

Factors

ISM method was used to analyze the relationship among

the top ten key success factors of mobile Internet. In or-

der to express conveniently and uniformly, “X” in the

The Research on the Key Success Factors of Mobile Internet with Interpretative Structural Modelling

110

Table 2. The descriptive statistical analysis of success factor

of mobile internet.

Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean

F1 3.9528 0.56039 0.14010

F2 3.1787 0.65670 0.16418

F3 3.7111 0.71063 0.17766

F4 4.5434 0.68023 0.17058

F5 3.0139 0.42956 0.10739

F6 4.5673 0.50486 0.12622

F7 4.4321 0.79054 0.19763

F8 3.5434 0.70451 0.17613

F9 3.0022 0.40290 0.10073

F10 2.7673 0.68083 0.17021

F11 3.4853 0.60934 0.15234

F12 3.0906 0.54010 0.13503

F13 3.2487 0.75670 0.18918

F14 3.0544 0.57285 0.14321

F15 3.3067 0.62054 0.15514

F16 2.9133 0.43732 0.10933

F17 3.2015 0.64291 0.16073

Note: sample siz e N = 16.

Table 3. Top10 key success factors of mobile internet.

Coding Key success factors

K1 User traffic and scale

K2 Product and service innovation

K3 Keen market environment sense

K4 User experience

K5 Business model innovation

K6 Core technology

K7 Development of mobile terminal

K8 E-commerce and online payment services

K9 Customized services

K10 Application of Cloud and big data

cell was used to illustrate the row factor and the column

factor influence each other, “V” means the row factor has

influence to the column factor, while “A” has the oppo-

site meaning, and the cell in space means there is no rela-

tionship between row factor and column factor (Table 4).

According to the re sults above, an adjacent matrix can

be built. For the key success factor for mobile Internet





1, 2,,10,

iiK  “1” means Ki is influential to Kj,

otherwise, “0” is used. So the relationship in Table 4 can

be expressed as the adjacency matrix as follows:

1245 6 78910

1000000000

1100100000

0111100010

1001000000

0100100100

0100111001

0000001100

0000000100

0001000010

0100001111

KKKKKKKKK

AI K





 





(1)

According to the formula:



11kkk

IAIAI





 

(I refer to the unit matrix), the reachable matrix is ac-

quired as follows with the ISM WIN 1.1 software:

1245 6 78910

1000000000

1100100100

0010100110

1001000000

0000100100

0000111101

0000001100

0000000100

0000000010

0000001101

KKKKKKKKK











(2)

The set for each factor Ki is obtained with the reach-

able matrix R:









ijij

PK Km



 (3)









ijji

QR Km



 (4)













PKQK TK

(5)





PK is called to reachable set, namely the set o f all

the reachable factors from factor Ki.





QK , called ad-

vanced set, refers to the set of all the factors can reach Ki.





TR means the universal set, that is the set of all the

factors both belong to the reachable set and the advanced

set (Table 5).

The relationship description of the key success factors

above are not intuitive enough. To express the relation-

ship more clearly, the hierarchy is further analyzed (Ta-

ble 6).

According to the hierarchy of the key success factors

of mobile Internet, the ISM model of the key success

factors of mobile Internet is set up (Figure 2).

The Research on the Key Success Factors of Mobile Internet with Interpretative Structural Modelling

111

Table 4. The relationship among the key success factors of mobile internet.

K1 User traffic and scale K2

K2 Product and service innovation A K3

K3 Keen market environment sense A K4

K4 User experience A V K5

K5 Business model innovation X V K6

K6 Core technology A A K7

K7 Development of mobile terminal V

K8 E-commerce and online payment services V V K9

K9 Customized services V A

K10

K10 Application of cloud computing and big data A V A A A

Table 5. The reachable set, advanced set and universal set

of the key success factors of mobile internet.

Ki P (Ki) Q (Ri) T (Ri)

K1 1 1, 2, 4 1

K2 1, 2, 5, 8 2 2

K3 3, 5, 8, 9 3 3

K4 1, 4 4 4

K5 5, 8 2, 3, 5, 6 5

K6 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 6 6

K7 7, 8 6, 7, 10 7

K8 8 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 8

K9 9 3, 9 9

K10 7, 8, 10 6, 10 10

Table 6. The hierarchy process of the key success factors of

mobile internet.

Ki P (Ki) Q (Ri) T (Ri)





2346

Stage1, ,,

KKK

K1 1 1 1

K5 5, 8 5 5

K7 7, 8 7, 10 7

K8 8 5, 7, 8, 10 8

K9 9 9 9

K10 7, 8, 10 10 10





15910

Stage2,,,

KKK

K7 7, 8 7 7

K8 8 7, 8 8





Stage3



K8 8 8 8





Stage4



The root key success factors affecting the development

of mobile Internet are K2 products and services innova-

tion, K3 keen market environment sense, K4 user experi-

ence and K6 core technology. They contribute to the

middle layer of the interpretative structure model gr eatly.

For example, the keen market environment sense can

promote the business model innovation, and the devel-

opment of core technologies for plays a significant role

in the application of cloud computing and big data,

which then promotes the development of mobile Internet

terminal greatly. Eventually, the root and intermediary

factors directly affect the K1 user traffic and scale, K

e-commerce and online payment and K9 customized ser-

vice. They are the surface key success factors and are

relatively easy to be quantified, so they can be the intui-

tive measure of the development of mobile Internet. The

enterprises of mobile Internet, mobile phone manufac-

turers and operators can evaluate their own development

situation, according to quantifiable key success factors,

and then guide and plan the development of themselves

in the view of the root factors.

6. Conclusion

The top 10 KSF of mobile Internet is found out with

Grounded Theory: the user traffic and scale, product and

service innovation, keen market environmental sense,

user experience and business model innovation, core

technology, the development of mobile terminals, e-

commerce and online payment services, customized ser-

vices and applications of cloud computing and big data.

ISM is applied to analysis the root KSF affecting the

development of mobile Internet, as they are product and

service innovation, keen market environmental sense,

user experience and core technology. The enterprises of

mobile Internet, mobile phone manufacturers and opera-

tors can be enlightened from both the root success factors

and their influence relation. In the future research, the

results should be compared with other research results.

And are there many differences between developed areas

and undeveloped areas for the top 10 KSF of mobile

Internet? Are there many differences between China and

USA for the top 10 KSF of mobile Internet? Isn’t it that

he root KSF of the mobile Internet will change with t

The Research on the Key Success Factors of Mobile Internet with Interpretative Structural Modelling

112

Figure 2. The hierarchical structure model of the key success factors of mobile internet.

time etc.?

7. Acknowledgements

Thanks for the helpful discussion with Mr. Decheng

Dong, Mr. Daffy Yan, Mr. Haozhe Lee and Mr. Zirong

Yan etc. Thanks the support to the questionnaire from

Ningo Student Studio, Operational Department of Ten-

cent.

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