Me, Myself and my Smartphone

Antecedents of Smartphone Attachment: An Abstract

authored by: Stefanie Sohn, Evmorfia Karampournioti, Klaus-Peter Wiedmann, Wolfgang Fritz
Abstract: Smartphones have become globally famous and change since their introduction to everyday life. The rapid rise in the use of smartphones, for instance, has significantly influenced consumer behavior. The resulting increase of smartphone usage in purchase-related situations, however, also yields negative consequences (e.g., consumer distress, decreasing attention). Hence, more still ever marketers are challenged to develop a deeper understanding of these novel objects of consumer behavior. Extant research provides limited insights on the relationship between consumers and their smartphones. Inspired by the ideas of attachment theory, we hence seek to fill this gap by investigating antecedents of consumers’ smartphone attachment. Extant research reveals that attachment to nonhuman objects like brands, places, and popular objects/products equals patterns of interpersonal attachment. Smartphones are considered as one of the most prevalent objects of modern society, which are constantly kept close to the human body. Thus, this study hypothesizes that consumers’ relationship to a smartphone reflects a form of attachment. In summary, this research broadens research on product attachment, brand attachment, and smartphone attachment by elucidating the drivers of smartphone attachment. In particular, this research provides, among others, novel insights into research on consumer–object relationships and develops a model of smartphone attachment considering the self-concept of consumers (i.e., an aggregate of beliefs about oneself). In particular, this research shows that smartphone attachment has an emotional and behavioral character, while the emotional attachment represents a crucial predictor of attachment behavior. As hypothesized, the greater consumer materialism tendency, the greater is the smartphone attachment. Sociability needs, in turn, positively influence only emotional attachment and thus shape attachment behaviors in an indirect way. Interestingly, internal locus of control attenuates consumers’ emotional attachment to the smartphone. By integrating different consumer self-perceptions, this research advances the work of Thomson et al. (2005) who reflect on the role of emotional attachment for attachment behaviors in a consumer research context. In addition, this study advances research on information systems and more specifically on smartphone attachment by introducing the emotional attachment construct and by elucidating major determinants of smartphone attachment.
Organisation(s): Institute of Marketing und Management
External Organisation(s): Technische Universität Braunschweig
Type: Contribution to book/anthology
Pages: 173-174
No. of pages: 2
Publication date: 16.06.2020
Publication status: Published
Peer reviewed: Yes
ASJC Scopus subject areas: Marketing, Strategy and Management
Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 12 - Responsible Consumption and Production
Electronic version(s): https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-39165-2_77 (Access: Closed)