Mobile phone purchase and usage behaviours of early adopter groups in Korea

Abstract

Recent mobile phones known as smartphones offer a variety of applications, such as Web browsing, entertainment tools, and personal calendar and contact management applications of the type that traditionally run on desktop computers. Some of the reasons why smartphones became popular rapidly in Korea may be related to the adoption by the type of user known as the early adopter. Because the early adopter group played a more crucial role in the area of mass consumption and because the mass market is changing more rapidly than before, this study examines mobile phone purchase and usage behaviours of early adopter groups in Korea in order to gain vital insights into establishing marketing strategies for early adopter groups. In this study, segmentation by means of a factor analysis and cluster analysis is conducted to classify early adopter groups in accordance with their activities, interests, and opinion. Specifically, factor analysis is employed to identify the common characteristics among lifestyle variables, and cluster analysis is then adopted for those factors to classify early adopter groups according to their lifestyles. In addition, we analyse the mobile phone purchase and usage behaviours of early adopter groups in Korea. The results of this study can contribute to the effort to classify early adopter groups while also having implications pertaining to mobile phone vendors and mobile service providers who target early adopters depending on their different characteristics.