Personalized wine lists. Wardrobe options to suit your taste. A unique experience. The planet is full of products and services that promise a personalized experience for every customer. And according to a new study from the University of Florida, our smartphones subconsciously cause us to prefer this kind of personalized option.
This work has revealed that the interest in these personalized options, or even in rare or special products, is actually fueled when we are captivated by our phones. The private and personalized relationship we have with these devices seems to encourage us to express our personalities more than when we buy products on a larger computer, or when we borrow someone else’s phone.
The findings suggest that companies should – and in fact already might – change what they offer consumers, depending on the device used. Enabling self-expression via a smartphone might also change several behaviors, such as how a person reacts to political polls on a mobile device.
“When you use your phone, your authentic ‘you’ speaks more. It affects the options you seek and the attitudes you express,” says Aner Sela, one of the study’s authors.
Along with her colleague Camilla Song, Ms. Sela has published her work in Journal of Marketing Research.
Researchers already suspected that smartphones might make users more self-centered to reflect their unique identities. This psychological state is known as self-focus and affects many behaviors.
“Individuals who are particularly self-focused tend to be more independent in terms of expressed attitudes. They conform less to standards,” Ms. Sela said. “When making choices, they tend to act on personal or deep-seated beliefs, preferences or tastes, and are less influenced by social context. »
In five experiments with university students and online participants, Ms. Sela and Song wanted to test whether smartphones promoted enough self-focus to change behaviors.
They found that users of such devices were much more likely to prefer unique objects, rather than popular items, or to choose items that they were told were associated with their personality, compared to what was when they used a larger computing device (tablet, desktop, laptop).
However, these effects disappear when the participants borrow a device, even if it is of the same brand.
“With a borrowed device, you don’t feel like you’re in your little bubble. What we’re seeing is that using a smart phone and enabling self-focus is really unique to a personal device,” Sela said.
In similar, yet unpublished work, the two researchers also found that consumers are also more loyal to a brand and less likely to return items purchased with their phone.