Professor Ooi Keng Boon receives Top Cited Paper award (2012-2017) from Elsevier (US) for his research paper which sheds new light on m-commerce in China and Malaysia.

UCSI University’s Professor Ooi Keng Boon has won the Top Cited Paper award (2012-2017) from Elsevier (US) for his research paper that focuses on the adoption of mobile commerce in China and Malaysia.

Titled, Predicting Consumer Decisions to Adopt Mobile Commerce: Cross Country Empirical Examination between China and Malaysia, Professor Ooi’s paper focuses on the viability of mobile commerce as a business model.

The paper was published in Decision Support Systems – a journal that is ranked A* by the Australian Business Dean Council (ABDC) and the Australian Council of Professor and Heads of Information Systems – and it has amassed 112 Scopus citations to date.

Based on the extensive empirical data that was collected from mobile phone outlets,  the research involved 222 Chinese consumers, and 172 Malaysian consumers.

Its findings negate the notion that given the increasing number of mobile users in developing countries, the rate of m-commerce would rise proportionately. It expounds the need to adopt newer research models other than the traditional Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) and Diffusion of Innovation (DOI).

Societal propensity to adopt mobile commerce was evaluated according to the following factors: trust; an application’s variety of services, its perceived usefulness, its perceived ease of use and its trialability. The significance of the cost involved in mobile commerce, age-related barriers and societal influence were also examined.

A comparative analysis of the findings also showed that while trust, cost and societal influence were common determinants that influenced participation in both countries, Malaysian consumers placed greater emphasis on an application’s variety of services. A platform’s perceived usefulness, its perceived ease of use and trialability did not effectively influence one’s decision to adopt mobile commerce in either country.

“The findings prompt mobile commerce providers to provide a greater variety of applications and services in the Malaysian market,” explained Prof Ooi. “The study also shows that older Malaysians are receptive towards mobile commerce and hence service providers should focus on them.”

In conclusion, the results from this study will be useful for telecommunication and mobile commerce companies in formulating marketing strategies for the future.

The paper was co-authored with Professor Alain Chong Yee Long (University of Nottingham, China) and Professor Felix Chan (Hong Kong Polytechnic University).

Prior to his latest award, Professor Ooi received the Highly Commended Award in the Research/Academic category from the University of Southern Queensland (USQ), Australia for his exceptional achievement in areas of research and academia at the Alumnus of the Year Awards 2016.  He was honoured with the National Outstanding Researcher Award for the Industrial Management & Information Systems discipline in the annual Private Education Excellence Award 2017 Event organised by the Private Education Co-operative of Malaysia. Credited with more than 5,800 citations in top-ranked journals, Professor Ooi has a Harzing H-index score of 47 (Scopus H-index = 32).