TY - JOUR
T1 - Choosing the right app
T2 - An exploratory perspective on heuristic decision processes for smartphone app selection
AU - Dogruel, Leyla
AU - Joeckel, Sven
AU - Bowman, Nicholas D.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015, © The Author(s) 2015.
PY - 2015/1/1
Y1 - 2015/1/1
N2 - Decision-making theories have argued that many daily decisions are the result of heuristic rather than systematic processes. Given the ubiquity of smartphones as mobile communication and computing devices along with the vast smartphone app market, our exploratory study aimed to understand how heuristics guide smartphone app selection. Observing 49 smartphone users from the US and Germany viewing 189 total apps from three predetermined categories, the current study identified five decision-making heuristics used to download a variety of smartphone apps. Of these, four were variants of a “Take the First” (TtF) heuristic that allowed smartphone users to quickly navigate the app market, by passing a good deal of other informational cues in order to download apps that were simply highly rated or ranked. Reliance on heuristic processing is useful in helping navigate the app market, but it also results in smartphone users overlooking potentially important app information.
AB - Decision-making theories have argued that many daily decisions are the result of heuristic rather than systematic processes. Given the ubiquity of smartphones as mobile communication and computing devices along with the vast smartphone app market, our exploratory study aimed to understand how heuristics guide smartphone app selection. Observing 49 smartphone users from the US and Germany viewing 189 total apps from three predetermined categories, the current study identified five decision-making heuristics used to download a variety of smartphone apps. Of these, four were variants of a “Take the First” (TtF) heuristic that allowed smartphone users to quickly navigate the app market, by passing a good deal of other informational cues in order to download apps that were simply highly rated or ranked. Reliance on heuristic processing is useful in helping navigate the app market, but it also results in smartphone users overlooking potentially important app information.
KW - Apps
KW - decision-making
KW - heuristics
KW - mobile communication
KW - smartphones
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85002900050&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1177/2050157914557509
DO - 10.1177/2050157914557509
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85002900050
SN - 2050-1579
VL - 3
SP - 125
EP - 144
JO - Mobile Media and Communication
JF - Mobile Media and Communication
IS - 1
ER -