eNcentive: a framework for intelligent marketing in mobile peer-to-peer environments

Abstract

In recent years, the growth of Mobile Computing, Electronic Commerce and Mobile Electronic Commerce has created a new concept of Mobile Electronic Marketing. New marketing models are being developed and used to target mobile users. Mobile environments introduces new challenges that need to be overcome by these marketing models in order to be successful and effective. This paper proposes a framework, called eNcentive, which addresses many of the issues that are characteristic of mobile environments. eNcentive facilitates peer-to-peer electronic marketing in mobile ad hoc environments. Our framework employs a intelligent marketing scheme, by providing users the capability to collect information like sales promotions and discounts. Users can propagate this marketing information to other users in the network. Participating users benefit from such circulation since businesses that originally created the promotions reward the active distributors with additional promotions and other compensations.