Influence of Proximity Distance and Route Map in M-Shopping Applications on Consumers' Behavior in Nairobi Metropolitan

A consumer's mobile shopping behavior heavily depends on several factors including, but not limited to gender, age, literacy, occupation, marital status and available communication technology. Ubiquitous technology has significant influence on behavior that is convenient for mobile shoppers. This research sought to study the influence of proximity distance and route map in m-shopping applications on consumers' behaviour in Nairobi Metropolitan. A cross-sectional research design was adopted and a sample size of 106 respondents determined using a simple random sampling technique. The primary data was collected through structured survey questionnaires, after which, STATA software was used for analysis. The study established a statistically significant relationship between the convenient in m-shopping applications and consumer’s m-shopping behaviour (ꭕ2=6.370a, p=.041<0.05). A statistically significant relationship between the proximity in the current m-shopping applications and consumer’s m-shopping behaviour was also noted (ꭕ2=13.234a, p=.001<0.05). Further, findings indicated a positive statistically significant relationship between the route map in the current m-shopping applications and consumer’s m-shopping behaviour (ꭕ2=72.192a, p=.000<0.05). Analyzing the influence of proximity distance on consumer’s behavior revealed that, consumers tend to favor businesses located closer to their current location when making buying decisions through m-shopping applications. Further, provision of vendor-consumer real-time navigation assistance would enhance consumer’s behavior. Despite the high deployment of mobile shopping applications, less attention is given to the proximity distance and route map aspects in the mobile shopping landscape. Consequently, this negatively impacts on the consumer’s m-shopping behavior. This study serves as an intervention target for improving the consumer behavior. It is therefore recommendable that the developers of m-shopping applications adopt a holistic and consumer-vendor centered approach to mobile applications. In addition, implementation studies should be employed to model this and identify other factors that may be useful to effectively improve m-shopper’s behavior.