A taxonomy of mobile phone consumers: insights for marketing managers

Amid less attention to the market segmentation of innovations through positioning innovations in the minds of consumers, the paper explores consumer innovativeness, need for emotion, and prestige price sensitivity to develop a taxonomy of mobile phone consumers. The study analyses survey data of 416 consumers using factor analysis and cluster analyses indicating interesting findings. Four distinct clusters emerge, namely cognitive adopters, prestige-seeking emotional innovators, emotional adopters, and prestige-seeking cognitive innovators. Findings reveal that prestige-seeking emotional innovators and prestige-seeking cognitive innovators have relatively higher level of innovativeness and prestige price sensitivity, but at the same time differ between them in terms of their level of need for emotion. The paper contributes to knowledge by suggesting that marketing constructs such as consumers' sensitivity to the prestige cue of prices as well as consumers' need for emotion are used to cluster mobile phone consumers. The taxonomy is highly relevant to marketing managers as it gives insights into potential additional bases for segmentation, positioning, and marketing communication strategy targeting innovative consumers through cognitive and/or emotional cues.