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LBS & tourism through the eyes of a postgrad marketing student in New Zealand.

Monday, June 13, 2005

Location-based vs. Context-based

While this paper is actually from 2004 and you may have come across it before, I only just discovered it and thought it was definitely worth posting:
Mathew, J., Sarker, S., & Varshney, U. (2004). M-COMMERCE SERVICES: PROMISES AND CHALLENGES. Communications of AIS, 2004(14), 1-11.
"This paper provides a brief description of two distinct approaches for designing and implementing M-Commerce services, the dominant location-based approach, and the gradually emerging context-based approach. The authors argue that the context-based approach, while more complex, holds greater potential for the future, given its inherent capability to reflect/support natural human social structures and behaviors."
A really interesting comparsion between 'location-based services' and 'context-based services'. I particularly like the tables contrasting their differences, as well as the illustrative scenarios given. There is absolutely no doubt that mobile devices are becoming increasingly pervasive worldwide, in both developed and developing countries; thus, it makes sense for these devices to intelligently communciate with each other autonomously.

Personally, I think that the seamless integration of both these approaches will provide the greatest value to the end-user. Holistically, it may be better to just take the 'context-based approach' and sweep it under the LBS umbrella in the long run - in fact, I think a lot of LBS developers already understand the concept, they just don't call it that. It's always good to see things from a different perspective, though!

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