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Shankar, A., Jebarajakirthy, C., & Kumari, P. (2021). Editorial for the Special Section on Research on
consumer evaluation of mobile applications: Does interactivity matter? Australasian Journal of
Information Systems, 25.
Information technology advancement, internet revolution and mobile phone penetration have enabled organisations to
revolutionize their service delivery patterns (Shankar and Jebarajakirthy, 2019; Shankar et al., 2020). Organisation are
using a variety of innovative electronic channels to enhance the consumer reachability and achieve competitive
advantages in a cost-effective manner (Islam et al., 2021). Among all electronic service delivery channels, mobile
applications are one of the most promising channels with a great degree of ubiquity and localization (Koenig-Lewis et
al., 2010; Shankar, 2021). Mobile applications are beneficial for both service providers and consumers. They enable
consumers to avail customized services anytime from anywhere and allow organisations to provide cost-effective and
time-efficient services to consumers (Shankar and Jain, 2021). Due to the absence of face-to face interaction, the
success of mobile commerce heavily depends on the interactivity of the mobile applications (Jebarajakirthy and
Shankar, 2021). In the context of mobile commerce applications, interactivity refers to the layout of applications and
contents that affect consumers’ experience while they interact with a mobile application (Coursaris and Sung, 2012; Lee
et al., 2015; Islam et al., 2021). Interactivity may be conceptualized as a multidimensional construct consisting of two
major elements, namely feature orientation and perception orientation (Gao et al., 2009).
Feature-oriented elements refer to some functional
characteristics of a mobile application including, layout,
navigation, content, and customer support that impact
application interactivity (Coursaris and Sung, 2012).
Perception-oriented elements include playfulness, perceived
hedonic benefits, user control, technology frustration, consumer
passion and responsiveness that are concerned with how
consumers perceive interactivity (Cyr et al., 2009). Bad design of
the mobile applications leads to technology frustration which
negatively impacts the consumer evaluation of the offered
services (Shankar et al., 2021). Hence, marketers are keen to
know how they can enhance feature-oriented interactivity and
perception-oriented interactivity to reduce technology
frustration and enhance consumer experience during the
consumer journey on mobile application platforms.
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