To date, there are few published articles relating to the taxonomy of smartphone users, thus leading to the lack of understanding of the specific factors on why different users continued to use smartphones in their daily activities and tasks, including distributed decision making. To address this issue and to fill the gap in the literature, we conducted an exploratory study to derive an empirically-based taxonomy of smartphone users. Drawing on data from a sample of 201 smartphone users', we use a combination of a hierarchical and a non-hierarchical cluster analysis procedure that reveal three well-separated clusters with regard to smartphone functionality, usefulness, continuance, reliability and accessibility, as well as smartphone cognitive trust. The three clusters are labeled as enthusiastic users (50% of the sample), average users (37%), and unenthusiastic users (13%). Functionality, continuance, and cognitive trust were significantly different across the three clusters while perceived usefulness and reliability & accessibility were not. The current study contributes to the literature on smartphone usage by providing an empirically-based taxonomy of three users groups. The findings in our study have significant implications for theory and practice.
['Efosa C. Idemudia', 'Mahesh S. Raisinghani', 'Placide Poba-Nzaou', 'Sylvestre Uwizeyemungu']
An Empirical Taxonomy of Smartphone Users in Their Daily Distributed Decision Making