Smartphone adoption: Design of factors within the framework of Theory of Consumption Values

Smartphones are used by majority of Western population, and they are mobile phones of choice also in the rest of the world. The Theory of Consumption Values (TCV) is a marketing theory that explains purchase behavior of consumer goods and services. The framework consists of functional, social, epistemic, hedonic, and conditional values; the latter being functional and/or social values present only in a specific situation. TCV is used in mobile device adoption literature disproportionably more often than in other fields. But virtually all TCV studies focused on smartphones are qualitative. The aim of this research is to design factors which could be later used in quantitative studies. Data were collected in Slovakia, and they are analyzed using principal component analysis. With regards to the results, there were 5 factors identified for functional values, 6 factors for social values, 3 factor for epistemic values, 4 factors for hedonic values, and 7 factors for conditional values.