Understanding student attitudes of mobile phone applications and tools: A study using conjoint, cluster and SEM analyses

Mobile phone use has grown dramatically throughout the world. While researchers have explored various facets of use and perceptions across age groups, genders and nationalities, segmentation by utility of mobile phone attributes has received little attention in academic research. Further, understanding how antecedent of attitudes differ by utility-based consumer segments has been underexplored. This research helps to fill these gaps by presenting a holistic view of mobile phone user preferences and perceptions among university students by applying methodologies from the marketing and information systems domains. Conjoint analysis provides insights into how students value various mobile phone applications and tools. Cluster analysis extracts salient and homogenous consumer segments from the conjoint analysis output. Structural equation modelling (SEM) then explores how antecedents to attitude may differ by the elicited consumer segments found through the cluster analysis. Implications of this work for theory and practice are presented.