Research Method

An exploratory qualitative study was conducted to study the concept of mobile service quality. The aim of qualitative research is to describe, analyze and understand the beliefs and behavior of individuals (Patton, 1990), in this case how consumers evaluate mobile services. Qualitative research methods can also contribute significantly to an emerging field like electronic services (Cowles, Kiecker & Little, 2002). Interviews with both industry experts and consumers of mobile services were conducted in Finland in 2002

The history of mobile services is short and consequently few Finns had experienced them. At the end of 2002, 28% of mobile phone owners used phones with WAP capability, 8% possessed phones with GPRS, and 2% of all mobile phones had MMS capability (Ministry of Traffic and Communication, 2003). However, only 6% of the mobile phone owners had accessed wireless Internet services in 2002 (http://www.accenture.fi, 2002). Owning a mobile phone with WAP or GPRS capability does not mean the owner will utilize that capability. At the time, WAP services made up only 4% of the total value of the mobile service market in Finland (Ministry of Traffic and Communication, 2003). The most popular services were mobile e-mail, dating services, ring tones, information search, news and bank services.

Because of the small number of users overall, a convenience and heterogeneous sample of 14 Finnish mobile service users were sought out and interviewed. Convenience sampling is a common and practical way of getting a strategic sample. It means that the researcher picks whoever is available and seems to match some general criteria (Patton, 1990). The main criterion here was previous experience with m-services . The empirical study was limited to consumers with experience of WAP- and GPRS-enabled mobile telephones. Twelve of the 14 mobile service users were male. However, according to one of the experts, the user group is male dominated, and the majority are interested in technology. The central characteristics of the respondents are shown in Table 5-1.

Table 5-1: Respondent characteristics

Resp.	Sex	Used since	Usage	Phone	Display	Purpose
1	M	1 year	Daily	Siemens + Nokia/GPRS	Small + large	Business/private
2	M	2 years	Sporadic	Nokia/WAP	Medium	Private
3	M	3 years	Daily	Nokia/GPRS	Medium	Business/private
4	M	1 year	Sporadic	Nokia/GPRS	Large	Private
5	F	<1year	Sporadic	Nokia/GPRS	Small	Private
6	F	<1year	Sporadic	Nokia/GPRS	Small	Private
7	M	1,5 year	Daily	Nokia/WAP	Medium	Business/private
8	M	2 years	Weekly	Ericsson/WAP	Large	Private
9	M	2 years	Sporadic	Nokia/WAP	Small	Private
10	M	2 year	Sporadic	Nokia/WAP	Small	Private
11	M	1 year	Sporadic	Nokia/WAP	Small	Private
12	M	3 years	Daily	Ericsson/GPRS	Small	Business/private
13	M	< 1 year	Sporadic	Nokia/GPRS	Small	Private
14	M	3 years	Daily	Nokia/GPRS	Small	Private

Four experts from the industry were interviewed to gain a deeper understanding of the factors that impact m-service quality, also from the service provider's point of view. The experts were: (1) A. D'Anci, Chairman of ISI Industry Software, (2) J. Sj blom, Manager of Interactive Cross-Media at ISI Industry Software, (3) M. Ericsson, Service Developer at HS-Net Media, and (4) J. Lauren, Business Unit Manager of Arena Partner. The experts demonstrated phones and services not yet on the market, explained technical details and provided industry statistics. All experts had been involved in large mobile service projects on the Finnish market.

Experience and knowledge of services among the informants were likely to vary and therefore the interviews allowed for flexibility regarding the formulation and order of questions. The interviews were conducted in the form of a discussion based on prepared themes (Patton, 1990). After collecting some background information, thematic questions were asked on consumers' experiences and perceptions of m-services, and their expectations of mobile service quality. Questions included, for example: (a) what kind of m-services they used, and in which situations, (b) how beneficial they found the services and why, (c) what problems they had encountered when using them, (d) how they would like the services to work, (e) what features they desired, (f) what they reacted particularly negatively to in m-services, (g) what they considered good quality in m-services, (h) their overall evaluation of m-services, (i) what had shaped their expectations of m-services, and (j) what their alternatives were to using m-services and how well the m-services compared with these alternatives.

Each interview was recorded and transcribed verbatim. The interviews lasted 35-75 minutes and amounted to 100 pages of written text. The previously presented e-SQ dimensions guided the analysis without imposing them on the data. When appropriate, text segments were coded according to the e-SQ dimensions and in instances where the dimensions did not fit, new ones were constructed . The aim was to construct a model that as closely as possible reflects the reality of consumers' m-service evaluation.