General Patterns of Cell Phone Usage Among College Students

Abstract

There has been tremendous growth in the cellular telephone industry in recent years. The present study was undertaken in order to better understand the pattern of usage among one of the most important target markets for cell phone products—young adults attending college. Data were collected from a total of 383 cell phone consumers residing in four states in different geographic regions of the United States. Respondents ranged in age from 18-57 with a median age of 23 years. Data analyses revealed several interesting and potentially important patterns of usage. Among these were the findings that the majority of those surveyed indicated that they use their cell phones for the purpose of social stimulation, to remain continually available, for domestic reasons, to leave themselves memos and reminders, for time-keeping, for emergency purposes, and to use the phone's phonebook function. It was also found that the cell phone market among the target population is relatively mature in that the vast majority of the sample (90.5%) indicated that they have owned a cell phone for more than one year. The maturity of the market, however, was found to vary as a function of geographic region. This particular finding has implications for regional cell phone marketing strategies. A number of other differences of potential importance for market segmentation and target marketing purposes also emerged and are discussed in detail.