I stumbled upon this nice article of Mathew Honan where he reports his impressions on living with many location-aware applications (LBAs) continuously tracking, and communicating, his position to others. His main concerns regarded, of course, privacy. Basically, he argues that with a minimal number of datapoints it is easy to infer where a person lives or works:

On a sunny Saturday, I spotted a woman in Golden Gate Park taking a photo with a 3G iPhone. Because iPhones embed geodata into photos that users upload to Flickr or Picasa, iPhone shots can be automatically placed on a map. At home I searched the Flickr map, and score—a shot from today. I clicked through to the user’s photostream and determined it was the woman I had seen earlier. After adjusting the settings so that only her shots appeared on the map, I saw a cluster of images in one location. Clicking on them revealed photos of an apartment interior—a bedroom, a kitchen, a filthy living room. Now I know where she lives.

As these technologies are far more pervasive than what we imagine them to be, it is easy for computer illiterates to loose track of where private information might appear. Even worst, once it escapes the control of the person, it is difficult to remove it from the cyberspace:

And location info gets around. The first time I saw my home address on Facebook, I jumped—because I never posted it there. Then I realized it was because I had signed up for Whrrl. Like many other geosocial applications, Whrrl lets you cross-post to the microblogging platform Twitter. Twitter, in turn, gets piped to all sorts of other places. So when I updated my location in Whrrl, the message leaped first to Twitter and then to Facebook and FriendFeed before landing on my blog, where Google indexed it. By updating one small app on my iPhone, I had left a giant geotagged footprint across the Web.

According to Honan, the most interesting benefit of LBAs is the possibility to locate objects or services nearby when a person is on the move. Also, he mention that through these services we can increase our social appearance and perception (e.g., I am here, do you want to have a coffee?). Problem with that is the lack of proper etiquette or protocol.

This issue came up again while having dinner with a friend at Greens (37.806679 °N, 122.432131 °W), an upscale vegetarian restaurant. Of course, I thought nothing of broadcasting my location. But moments after we were seated, two other friends—Randy and Cameron—showed up, obviously expecting to join us. Randy squatted at the end of the table. Cameron stood. After a while, it became apparent that no more chairs would be coming, so they left awkwardly. I felt bad, but I hadn’t really invited them. Or had I?

Finally, Honan points out how we should not give up completely our physical context in favor of digital content. One of the biggest challenge of this field is that for this information to avoid to be invasive, creepy, or isolating.

Brody, A. B., and Gottsman, E. J. Pocket bargain finder: A handheld device for augmented commerce. In HUC ’99: Proceedings of the 1st international symposium on Handheld and Ubiquitous Computing (London, UK, 1999), Springer-Verlag, pp. 44–51. [URL]

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This paper presents Pocket BargainFinder, a prototype that lets the consumer browse products in the physical world, then buy them, at the best deal, in the virtual world. The main argument of the authors was that consumers want some kind of tangible contacts with goods as they shop and that shopping agent were not able to be accessed on a mobile device.

Imagine a Saturday morning visit to your neighborhood Super Bookstore. You’re enjoying your pick from the New York Times Bestseller List, with a double mocha latte and a banana walnut muffin on the side. Light classical music wafts from the overhead speakers as you sink deeper into an oversized leather chair. The book’s a great read—you’d like to buy a copy—so you slip your Internet-connected mobile phone from your pocket and scan the barcode on the book jacket, using a compact barcode reader. In moments, price quotes appear on the phone display: an online bookstore has the book for 40 per cent less than the Super Bookstore price.

The t statistic was introduced in 1908 by William Sealy Gosset, a statistician working for the Guinness brewery in Dublin,  Ireland (“Student” was his pen name). Gosset had been hired due to Claude Guinness’s innovative policy of recruiting the best graduates from Oxford and Cambridge to apply biochemistry and statistics to Guinness’ industrial processes. Gosset devised the t-test as a way to cheaply monitor the quality of beer. He published the test in Biometrika in 1908, but was forced to use a pen name by his employer, who regarded the fact that they were using statistics as a trade secret. In fact, Gosset’s identity was known to fellow statisticians.

[More on Wikipedia]

Swamynathan, G., Wilson, C., Boe, B., Almeroth, K., and Zhao, B. Y. Do social networks improve e-commerce? : a study on social marketplaces. In WOSP ’08: Proceedings of the first workshop on Online social networks (New York, NY, USA, 2008), ACM, pp. 1–6. [URL]

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This paper aimed at answering a simple question: “do social networks improve e-Commerce”? Given the rapid growth of online social networks, the authors were interested in understanding whether transactions conducted between friends could have any quantitative difference with transactions conducted with strangers.

To study the convergence of social networks and e-Commerce the authors took a representative web site, namely Overstock Auctions, where users have the possibility to create both networks with their friends and with business partners. One of the running hypothesis that the authors had was that users could trust more a partner in their social network than a complete stranger and therefore conduct more transactions inside their networks than outside.

The authors found that while the majority of users do not engage in social networking, those who transact with friends generally obtain significantly benefits in the form of higher user satisfaction. The authors conclude that with sufficient adoption social networking can have a dramatic positive impact on online marketplaces.

Prus, R. Shopping with companions: Images, influences and interpersonal dilemmas. Qualitative Sociology 16, 2 (1993), 87–110. [URL]

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This paper describes a sociological study conducted to understand “how do people accomplish shopping activities”. Particularly the author was interested in understanding the role of “shopping companions”, who might be seen helpful and desirable in many occasions and distractors in many other circumstances:

“… marketplace settings often have been contrived to encourage or entice prospective buyers to part with theirs goods by offering these in exchange for other items. It is in acquiring goods or entering into exchanges that buyers most prominently express themselves in the action around which the marketplace exists. … the presence of shopping companions adds further complexities to these encounters. Shopping companions might seem to represent clear allies for the shoppers and are often appreciated by shoppers, but shoppers also tend to be concerned about both companion interferences and influences.“

The author further organizes the discussion on shoppers experience differenciating between: a) task vs. recreational approaches to shopping; b) mutuality of shopping styles; c) getting help with shopping activities; and d) the dynamics of influence in group shopping ventures.

a) When shopping is approached as a task to be completed with some efficiency (e.g., buying grocery items), people tend to be more concerned about companions assisting or negating their effort in one or other ways.

b) Mutuality of shopping styles consists in the congeniality of shopper-companion, the consistency of shopper-companion intensities in shopping, and their financial consonance.

c) te major forms of aid involved advice and general assistance. Adivice generally revolves around companions’ definition of products and products applications. This factor involves the risk that buying a certain item entails and the knowledge or expretise of the companion. Even when they felt knowledgeable about products, many shoppers still indicate that they value second opinions of items they contemplate purchasing.

d) Shoppers are generally concerned about maintaining self direction while shopping with companions. Companions appear able to encourage or discourage others to make more purchases that would have been the case otherwise. Some shoppers reported to have developed strategies to avoid influence from companions.

“… shopping is an activity characterized by ambiguity, embellishment, and risk on the one side and obligation, desire, and (often) irretrievable commitments on the other.”

Bohnenberger, T., Jameson, A., Krüger, A., and Butz, A. Location-aware shopping assistance: Evaluation of a decision-theoretic approach. In Mobile HCI ’02: Proceedings of the 4th International Symposium on Mobile Human-Computer Interaction (London, UK, 2002), Springer-Verlag, pp. 155–169. [URL]

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This paper describes a PDA-based system that give a shopper directions through a shopping mall on the basis of a) the types of products that the shopper has expressed an interest in; b) the shopper’s current location; c) the purchases that the shopper has made so far.

The authors built this system on the assumptions that the user might have a series of needs before going shopping. However, the authors cautions on how people often have considerable freedom in determining what particular location to visit for their shopping activities and that they might not have a clear understanding of their shopping needs.

One of the problem m-commerce application need to solve is how to deal with the uncertainties that are inherent to any attempt to match customers with products. For instance a user’s need might be generically specified as “something amusing to read on the plane”. These kind of needs might be difficult to operationalize for any intelligent interface.

In the study reported in this paper the authors focused simply on optimizing the path the user has to take in order to buy a list of items. They built a PDA-based prototype and set up a fake shopping mall. They asked 10 user to shop with the PDA assistant and 10 with a paper map. They found that the group using the PDA solved the task faster.

Dholakia, R. R. Going shopping: key determinants of shopping behaviors and motivations. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management 27, 4 (1999), 154–165. [URL]

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This paper describes a study of how the changing social pressure on going shopping impacts on married households. In particular the author focused on two constructors: sex and shopping context which determines shopping responsibilities among households members.

The starting premise of this work is that shopping is a genedered activity. However, the author cautioned on how social changes such as the increasing number of women in paid work force, may eventually reduce or eliminate some of these sex differences. To find out the author conducted a large scale survey, involving 1600 responses.

Results show that shopping is still a gendered activity with women assuming primary responsability for household grocery shopping. For clothing shopping women even share responsibility for shopping of men’s clothing. However, the male role is not insignificant. The data also clearly showed that grocery stores and shopping malls represents very different shopping experiences and that the male/ female role is contingent upon the specific context. The recreational and expressive nature of shopping at the mall seems to appeal more to the femal shoppers.

Yoh, E., Damhorst, M. L., Sapp, S., and Laczniak, R. Consumer adoption of the internet: The case of apparel shopping. Psychology & Marketing 20, 12 (December 2003), 1095–1118. [URL]

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This article describes a conceptual model of how people purchase apparel online, which combines the theory of reasoned action (Fishbein & Ajzen, 1975) and components of a theory of innovation adoption (Rogers, 1995). In the former theory, behavioural intentions are a function of two perimary determinants: the attitude toward the object and the individual perception of normative social pressure. Additionally, a social-norm component incorporates an individual’s belief of a reference group over his/her behavior. The latter theory provides valuable insights for understanding the decision making process related to internet apparel shopping.

People who had more positive beliefs about Internet apparel shopping had more positive attitudes toward Internet apparel shopping. People who had more positive attitudes toward Internet apparel shopping had greater intention to purchase apparel through the Internet. In addition, people who had more social support to adopt Internet apparel shopping perceived more social acceptance of Internet apparel shopping and, in turn, had greater intention to purchase apparel through the Internet.

Rich, S. U., and Jain, S. C. Social class and life cycle as predictors of shopping behavior. Journal of Marketing Research 5 (February 1968), 41–49. [URL]

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This is an old study of how social class might represent a good predictor of shopping behavior. The authors conducted a large interview study with women in Cleveland, US. They found that at that time, newspaper was a great surce of information for women. Through this study, the author were able to understand that social class distincitions have been obscured by rising incomes and educational levels.

Traditionally it has been held that consumer buying behavior can be classified by social class and stage in the family life cycle. Recently it has been suggested that these distinctions have been obscured by the leveling effects of social and economic changes. From data of an extensive empirical study of women’s shopping behavior, the authors suggest that in many instances the earlier market segmentation concept may be outmoded.

O’Hara, K., and Perry, M. Shopping anytime anywhere. In CHI ’01: CHI ’01 extended abstracts on Human factors in computing systems (New York, NY, USA, 2001), ACM, pp. 345–346. [URL]

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This paper presents a field study that was conducted to understand in which particular situations people whant to buy something but for some reason they defer their transaction. The author motivate this research question by explaining that m-commerce applications are built as demonstrators rather than compelling applications. Additionally, they felt that most research on consumer behavior was directed towards advertisers. They found little user understanding that can directly inform design of new m-commerce devices and services.

They used a “photo diary” approach. They gave a disposable camera to 16 participants, asking them to take a picture every time they deferred a transaction impulse. Participants took an average of 36 pictures during the course of a week. Half the opportunities for fulfilling deferred transactions could be supported by direct interaction between mobile devices and the transaction objects themselves (e.g., barcode-scanning). Also, the majority of deferred impulse were generated at home (e.g., provisioning of goods). Thirty percent of deferred impulse were generated in a shop or in front of a shop window.

They summarized these finding by indicating three major implications for design: a) consumer behavior is social and collaborative. One reason participants deferred their impulse fulfilment was because they needed to seek reassurance and advice about potential purchases. b) Information seeking and analysis not in the moment. Transactions were also deferred due to the lack of information at the point of impulse generation. c) Consumption is not a pinpoint decision process. It is more useful to think about consumer behavior as transaction narratives from an impulse seed to a final transaction. Many participants talked about mental wish-lists.