Exploring the Causes of Smartphone Dependency and Purchasing Behavior

The surge of smartphones throughout the world leads to users' dependency that can be seen everywhere. The aim of this paper is to explore whether social needs, social influence, and conveniences of smartphones can affect the users' purchasing behaviors. Questionnaire was administered to 664 tourists from different parts of Taiwan, locals and the other countries, based upon convenience sampling. Both quantitative and qualitative results shed light on a fact: Social influence and convenience might have a great impact on the participants' dependency on smartphones. All of the variables are mildly positive correlation except purchasing behavior. The stepwise regression indicated that convenience, social influence and social needs were closely related to each other. The strongest significant determinant of smartphone users' dependency was social influence. Whereas, social needs was rejected. Next, convenience was closely associated with users' dependence. Finally, there was closely related between purchasing behavior and users' dependency. The results show that 458 participants relied on smartphones a lot. Consumers view smartphones as multi-use devices for calling, texting, gaming, socializing, and downloading applications. This implies that the popularity of using smartphones revolutionized the consumers' way of life styles. All in all, smartphones are apparently becoming a powerful tool to communicate in this advanced high-tech social environment. However, the high tech offers us immediate satisfaction and likes. This may be a dilemma between high-level civilization and human introspection. The devices can replace their hands-on learning and leisure activities which are important for real-world learning, communication skills, social interaction, problem-solving skills as well as develop their empathy in everyday lives.