A qualitative enquiry into the appropriation of mobile telephony at the bottom of the pyramid

Purpose: The paper aims to analyse Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP) customers’ (e.g. Bangladeshi farmers) use and appropriation of mobile telephony and to critically identify a suitable research strategy for such investigation.

Design/methodology/approach: Concentrated ethnographic immersion was combined with both methodological and investigator triangulation during a four-month period of fieldwork conducted in Bangladeshi villages to obtain more robust findings. Concentrated immersion was required to achieve relatively speedier engagement owing to the difficulty in engaging with respondents on a long-term basis.

Findings: The farmers’ use of mobile telephony went beyond the initial adoption, as they appropriated it through social and institutional support, inventive means and/or changes in their own lifestyle. The paper argues that technology appropriation, being a result of the mutual shaping of technology, human skills and abilities and macro-environmental factors, enables users to achieve desired outcomes which may not always be the ones envisaged by the original designers.

Research limitations/implications: The paper contributes to two major areas: first, it identifies technology appropriation as an important and emerging concept in international marketing research; second, it suggests a concentrated form of ethnographic engagement for studying technology appropriation in a developing country context.

Practical implications: A good understanding of the dynamic interplay between users’ skills and abilities, social contexts and technological artefacts/applications is required in order for businesses to serve BoP customers profitably.

Originality/value: The paper presents a dynamic model of technology appropriation based on findings collected through a pragmatic approach by combining concentrated ethnographic immersion with methodological and investigator triangulation

The Non-Responsive Receiver Problem in Mobile Ad-hoc Networks

This letter exposed a serious unfairness problem with IEEE 802.11 MAC based Mobile Ad-hoc Networks (MANETs) when operating TCP connections, and identifies the three common factors that contribute to this problem. The work initiated the development of a programmable wireless framework that is subsequently used in a spin-out company (TOM), and by the Telecoms Technology Testing centre in Taiwan(Dr D Chieng).

Characterization and Modeling of the Indoor Radio Channel at 868 MHz for a Mobile Bodyworn Wireless Personal Area Network

This letter reports the statistical characterization and modeling of the indoor radio channel for a mobile wireless personal area network operating at 868 MHz. Line of sight (LOS) and non-LOS conditions were considered for three environments: anechoic chamber, open office area and hallway. Overall, the Nakagami-m cdf best described fading for bodyworn operation in 60% of all measured channels in anechoic chamber and open office area environments. The Nakagami distribution was also found to provide a good description of Rician distributed channels which predominated in the hallway. Multipath played an important role in channel statistics with the mean recorded m value being reduced from 7.8 in the anechoic chamber to 1.3 in both the open office area and hallway.