From e-commerce to m-commerce: An analysis of the user’s experience with different access platforms

The e-commerce market size is increasing day by day. In this context, m-commerce has become one of the fastest growing forms of e-commerce in the world. Considering the diversity of platforms and devices, it is important to understand what influences the intention to continue using e-commerce access platforms. We explore different factors predicting the user’s experience with the accessed platform through a free-simulation experiment. Participants were separated into three access platforms, one using traditional e-commerce (through notebooks or PCs) and two others involving m-commerce (accessing the website browser or the app). We verified that intention to continue using the online platform is strongly influenced by the consumers’ perceived value, being driven especially by its benefits and not sacrifices associated with the platform. We found differences among the three studied platforms regarding the significance, order of the predictors, and control variables such as platform previous experience, gender, and age, suggesting the existence of significant differences on the side of the consumer as to the platform they use on their online purchases; revealing, for example, that consumers who use mobile apps are influenced essentially by utilitarian than hedonic motives, differently from those who use website browsers. Finally, we outline some theoretical and practical implications for researchers and developers.