Location, Location, Location

Not long ago Pokémon Go made a huge splash, driving people to hunt Pokémon with their smartphones on a quest to control landmarks and structures in the augmented reality game.

The National Park Service’s National Mall app lets visitors use a Locate Me feature to explore historical buildings and monuments surrounding the nation’s capital.

And who doesn’t like Gas Buddy, an app that helps consumers find the cheapest nearby gas station, read reviews and win prizes.

The reasons these apps succeed may be apparent, but research from two business information systems professors indicates a consumer’s decision making when choosing to use a new location-based app is a complex process. Dr. Bidyut Hazarika and Dr. Mohammadreza Mousavizadeh are researching the right balance of information, features and security when it comes to location-based applications.

The most important consideration is privacy. “By sharing your location, there is a risk associated with losing your privacy,” says Hazarika. “It is a complex situation, since users must first decide if they are willing to lose their privacy in return for a service provided by a location-based application.”

The decision by consumers to use or not to use a location-based application is a trade-off between perceived benefits and risks. Since these can vary widely, the team’s research identified three areas that consumers consider—loss of privacy, time
risk and psychological risk. Knowing this, companies and developers can enhance experiences with location-based apps by addressing the decision making process:

• Providing different levels of privacy settings gives users the flexibility of choosing how much information they want to share.

• Apps must deliver what they promise. The application description should be clear so that users do not feel that it was a waste of time to download and use the location-based application.

• Developers should seek to eliminate the frustration associated with boredom and mental fatigue from applications that do not work properly. The performance and the results provided by the location based application should be current and up to date.

In addition to these three areas, companies and developers can consider reasons consumers choose to use an app. “Several benefits push consumers toward using location-based applications more and more,” says Mousavizadeh. “Our study found that personalization, timeliness and positioning are important benefits. If users are able to get in-time information (timeliness) based on their current location (positioning) and preferences (personalization), they are more likely to choose to use an app.”

Beyond games and gas stations:  With the constant influx of new apps on the market, Hazarika and Mousavizadeh highlight the future of apps

Mousavizadeh: “LBAs are becoming so popular since people are becoming more and more interested in receiving services that are location-based. Their future is connected to so many other evolving technologies and concepts. When we talk about the future of location-based apps, we have to think about emerging smart services, most of which are benefiting from location data.”

Hazarika: “In the future, location-based apps will be able to provide an even more personalized experience to individual users. Based on an individual’s location, these apps could provide personalized ads on products from a nearby store, restaurant recommendations based on the user’s location and even pinpoint items on a shelf in a store. We could have a fully inter-connected home, work and automobile where our car will go to the gas station to fill itself and drive us to work—all while we are taking a nap.”