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Literature Review of Location Based Services

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 Literature Review of Location Based Services
Theodoros Oikonomidis Konstantinos Fouskas Maro Vlachopoulou
University of Macedonia University of Macedonia University of Macedonia
Department of Applied Informatics Department of Applied Informatics Department of Applied Informatics
156 Egnatia Str. GR 54636 156 Egnatia Str. GR 54636 156 Egnatia Str. GR 54636
Thessaloniki, Greece Thessaloniki, Greece Thessaloniki, Greece

Abstract
Location Based Services (LBS) utilize sensors from smart devices and provide accurate positioning estimation for end-
users on indoor and outdoor environments. With Internet of Things(ΙoΤ) getting higher recognition amongst regular users
a variety of daily tasks is getting depended on the efficiency of service providers and enablers in order to be executed
successfully. With a market that is growing and demands better indoor and outdoor solutions for real time positioning
estimation, enterprises are competing each other on technological research and development of new products and
services. The Scopus of this research is to identify potential gaps on the field of LBS for both academic and business sector.
For this reason, we made a systematic research of the last 20 years of publications by using relevant keywords on digital
scientific libraries. We identified lack of scientific publications on the Business and Management field where we further
isolated researches with Business and Managerial interest. We highlight specific Grounded Theories that have not been
fully exploited, on the field of LBS, since only a few researches exist that examine the adoption and success of LBS. Future
researches have the opportunity to exploit our gathered sample of researches and extend the presented research models
in order to provide the Academic and Business community with new knowledge.

KEYWORDS
Location Based Services, Location Based Mobile Applications, Literature Review.

1. INTRODUCTION
LBS have been a subject of research for many years. The constant evolution of technology regarding smart
mobile devices has brought new opportunities not only for research but also for commercial purposes.
Geolocation when it comes to outdoor usage seems to be fulfilled in terms of research activity. On the other
hand, Indoor Positioning Systems (IPS) are rising since the advent of new technologies such as Beacons on
the early 2015 and seems that there is a huge gap concerning the adoption of such technologies and how
they have been exploited by the research community for exporting useful information regarding User
Behavior (Fellner, Huang, and Gartner 2017).

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
There are numerous researches that are utilizing smart devices for the shake of technological advancements,
others for the creation of a new innovative service that can revolutionize the customer experience and
enhance VR experiences (Foth et al. 2009). The minority are literature review papers that are determining
the studies that have the highest impact and separate the categorization and the field of each one in order
to be further utilized in future work (Kárník and Streit 2016).
The field of LBS lack of researches that focus simultaneously on both the technology stream and the research
stream based on stable frameworks and theories (Khruahong et al. 2018). As a result, this field opens
significant opportunities for researchers that want to explore Behavior of end users in addition to an
innovative solution to approximation location problems such as IPS (Wu, Kao, and Yang 2012).
Also, the managerial implications of the current research in LBS seems to be left behind comparing to other
relevant disciplines such as information systems-oriented researches (Rinaldi 2009). There seems to be
another gap on the management perspectives and consequences of the Location Based User Generated data
that can unlock new insights on the managerial enchantments that can be utilized for research purposes (Tiru
et al. 2010) (Azlan et al. 2017).
It seems that location-based services are highly connected with mobile phones that can offer mobility while
using these services (Curran and Hubrich 2009). Moreover, the content created by these applications are
highly correlated by the usage of the typical users (Gummerus and Pihlström 2011).
Specific researchers have identified the fact that geospatial information is driven by behavioral characteristics
since motivation is a major fact for every single transportation (Girardin et al. 2008; Espeter and Raubal 2009;
May, Bayer, and Ross 2007). Others have classified the transportation methods-means into different
classifiers in order to better understand how geotagging is performed by end users through social media
(Tamas and Toth 2018). It seems that different means of transportation lead to different transit behavior such
as more waiting times or different time of walking times. Another interesting behavior that is unveiled is the
fact that the geotagging performed in social media is not always valid since many people make check in after
their activity is over (Rybarczyk et al. 2018).
Indoor location technologies applied inside libraries can better explain behavioral characteristics that are
relevant to book content and the provided services on specific areas of every library(Von Stülpnagel and
Schmid 2019). Classification of books is made easier and faster, as is the control of the availability and the
demand for thematic units and specific text content. Researchers can identify the days and hours that libraries
are facing their higher demand and optimize their offering services for better results (Liu and Hsu 2018).
The impact of Location Analytics into Business intelligence has been confirmed by the fact that more than
60% of the big data on the internet has geo-reference component. Hence Location Analytics is a new area
that was merged by Business Intelligence (Rybarczyk et al. 2018). The combination of Geolocation Analytics
with Location Intelligence has brought the advent of Intelligence analytics. Location analytics can enhance
the user experience by verifying the optimal site for the nearest restaurant or ATM, or the number of
locations that a market can support, and the business effect that the competition sales potential has (Chen,
Chiang, and Storey 2012).
Behavioral characteristics and applications have raised high interest regarding the analysis of user intentions
while using IPS and how they can interact with a smartphone application (Huang et al. 2018). Although people
usually are not easily familiarized with new user interfaces, they seem to outperform tasks when they are
asked to through an indoor Location-Based service(May, Bayer, and Ross 2007). Also by giving them tasks
they had a better user experience for events such as a visit to a museum and the like (Chianese, Piccialli, and
Valente 2015).

3. METHODOLOGY
We have utilized a variety of academic libraries that helped us in order to cover the majority of the significant
publications of the last 20 years for the purpose of this research. The libraries that were utilized for this
purpose were Emerald, ScienceDirect, Scopus, Wiley InterScience. Furthermore, the classification of the
publication according to the different fields is executed with filters that can be applied on the online site of
the prementioned libraries (Schlichter and Kraemmergaard 2010). Moreover, we have used specific keywords
in order to isolate specific implemented technologies such as “Location Based Services”, “Location Based
Mobile Applications”. While applying the keywords on the other Services we specifically used the keywords
GNSS receivers, Ultra-Wideband, Wi-Fi Positioning System, Visual Light Communicator since with the
acronyms we were losing a large number of publications (Webster 2002). On this first stage we have applied
a minor filter in order to separate the publications that are included only on Scientific Papers and Journals
which are easier to access than others such as Book Chapters and “under review” Papers or Articles. The first
phase contains 222603 selected papers that were isolated by applying the prementioned keywords, contain
the 20 years of research on LBS.
The following figure presents indicatives regarding the research on LBS has been implemented the last 20
years. It is also insightful by providing the departments where research has put the most and the least effort
in terms of quantity of publications.

Figure 1 Research Fields of LBS 2000-2020

 Research Fields of Location Based Services 2000-2020
70000
60000
50000
40000
30000
20000
10000
0

Engineering and Computer Science have the highest point of interest as a Discipline on the field of LBS due to
the high value of input that have through the years on LBS (Torteeka and Chundi 2014). Engineering seems
to be the highest applicable field regarding LBS since it is the fundamental process when it comes to new
innovative products on every single industry. The way that is implemented can affect the accuracy of LBS(Al
Qathrady and Helmy 2017). From the way that a product is designed and the location that a technology is
implemented, has a tremendous effect on the accuracy of the implemented method and the final results that
will be delivered (Claus and Martin 2004). On the other hand, Computer Science is having the most targeted
field regarding publication researches when it comes to publications (Yang et al. 2015).
Following this path, we isolated the field of Business and Management for two main reasons. It is nearest to
our expertise, and it has the minority of all the LBS publications which potentially brings more academic
opportunities for research gaps and publications. By examining those researches, we have reached to a point
where we could identify 2 kind of researches. The first one was the exploratory type of researches were
different technologies were implemented and tested in order to provide LBS environment with improvement
to indoor and outdoor location. The second type of researches were based on specific Grounded theories
that were relevant to the success aspects of LBS and the paragons of adoption for end-users and businesses
with relevant managerial and business aspects. In order to identify research gaps, we carefully studied these
publications in order to find the Grounded-research theories that were utilized for their research. From this
process we isolated 11 researches that utilize the aspect of Location into their Services and Examine this unit
of analysis under specific Grounded Theories.

Table 1 LBS Researches with Grounded Theories

No Researches Year Theoretical
Model
1 A Study on User Behavior Analysis of Integrate Beacon Technology into Library 2018 TAM
Information Services
2 Determinants of behavioral intention to use the Personalized Location-based 2019 TAM
Mobile Tourism Application: An empirical study by integrating TAM with ISSM

3 The Impact of Location-Based Service Factors on Usage Intentions for 2018 TAM
Technology Acceptance: The Moderating Effect of Innovativeness
4 Understanding Motivations and Acceptance of 2016 TAM
Location-Based Services
5 What promotes smartphone-based mobile commerce? Mobile-specific and 2017 TAM
self-service characteristics
6 Acceptance of Smartphone-Based Mobile Shopping: Mobile Benefits, 2017 UTAUT
Customer Characteristics, Perceived Risks, and the Impact of Application Context

7 Usage factors of location-based social applications: the case of Foursquare 2018 TAM/UTAUT
 8 User acceptance of location-tracking technologies in health research: 2018 UTAUT
Implications for study design and data quality
9 Success factors in developing iHeart as a patient-centric healthcare system: A 2018 Delone &
multi-group analysis McLean / TAM
10 The role of personalization on continuance intention in food service mobile 2018 TAM/Privacy
apps: A privacy calculus perspective Calculus
Model
11 What Influences Travelers’ Adoption of a Location-based Social Media Service 2013 UTAUT
for Their Travel Planning?
12 User acceptance of location-based social networking services: An extended 2013 TAM
perspective of perceived value.

We can see that the majority of the theories involved are TAM and UTAUT with the exception of 2 studies
that utilize Delone and McLean model and Privacy Calculus Model. 6 utilize the TAM model 3 the UTAUT and
3 are use multipurpose Models which are totally TAM, UTAUT, Delone and McLean, Privacy Calculus Model.
Moreover, they are the researches that try to extend the already existing models and create more broad
perspectives of research on the field of LBS. Another interesting fact is that the majority of the studies are
from 2017 with the exception of one that is from 2013 and utilizes UTAUT on the Tourism industry.

4. CONCLUSIONS
In the last 20 years seems to exist relatively few researches published to scientific conferences and journals
worldwide regarding user adoption as TAM and UTAUT examine, which leaves potentially great room to grow
on this field. From the current research we identify a potential big gap regarding LBS and the exploitation of
research models. Potentially this could explain the reason why these Services have not been adopted by
Businesses and end-users among many other reasons such as the privacy and the legal pitfalls which are not
a subject of study in the current research. With many studies proving that LBS can be a part of Businesses
Digital Transformation we expect that more studies can exploit the research gap and provide with additional
knowledge Business and academic sector. A future work for the current research could be a synthesis of a
research model that is based on TAM/UTAUT and provide an extension with concepts that have not been
studied yet in combination with other already studied. This potential future work can provide with
correlations and knowledge that LBS sector might need to move on and be further established in the near
future for both academics and businesses.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
«This research is co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Social Fund- ESF) through the
Operational Programme «Human Resources Development, Education and Lifelong Learning» in the context
of the project “Strengthening Human Resources Research Potential via Doctorate Research” (MIS-5000432),
implemented by the State Scholarships Foundation (ΙΚΥ)»

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View publication stats

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