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Evaluation of Smartphone feature preference by a modified AHP approach

Conference Paper · December 2015

DOI: 10.1109/IEEM.2015.7385716

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 Evaluation of Smartphone Feature Preference by a Modified AHP Approach
F. Ho1, C. N. Wang1, C. T. Ho1, Y. C. Chiang1, Y. F. Huang1
1
Department of Industrial Engineering and Management,
National Kaohsiung University of Applied Sciences, Kaohsiung, Taiwan
(hoc@kuas.edu.tw)
Abstract - This research aims to study the customers'
preferences ranking of smartphone attributes and the price
range preferences among Taiwanese customers. A modified
AHP is conducted in order to meet the research objective.
Smartphone features were selected from previous research
to construct the hierarchy structure. The AHP scale between
two criteria was simplified to 0 ~ 1 in order to conduct an
online survey. 389 samples were collected through the web-
based survey. The weightings of the criteria were then
calculated to sort out the ranking.
The results showed that the performance of the
processor is regarded as the most important element when
purchasing a smartphone, following by the price and battery
endurance. The most preferred purchase price is
NT$6,001~15,000, which might due to the compromise
between processor and price.
Keywords - AHP, MCDM, Smartphone features, User
preference
I. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Research Background and Motivation
Smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced features
and functionality beyond traditional feature phones like
making phone calls and sending text messages [1]. This
type of mobile device can access to digital media and the
Internet, also run its own computer programs so called
mobile application or app. Due to these features,
smartphones are consider to be handheld personal
computers, and bring convinces to our daily lives. In
recent years, the adoption of smartphones has
significantly accelerated since the launch of iPhone (and
the apps available through iTunes) and an army of mobile
phones based on the Android system [2].
The smartphone market become more and more
competitive recently, finding the right product strategies
to attractive customers becomes the key to win the battle.
Some companies came out with the idea of launching
products with top notch features and lower price such as
Xiaomi. Xiaomi launched their first smartphone, MI 1 in
the December, 2011 which was priced around NT$9000.
The MI 1 was installed with a Qualcomm MSM8260,
1.5GHz processor, which was one of the top processors at
that time. Other smartphone launched in Q4 of 2011 such
as iPhone 4s and HTC Sensation XL, both priced over
NT$20,000, more than double the MI 1's price. In 2013,
Xiaomi launched the new Redmi, which was sold under
NT$4,000 yet the device has well performance. This
ultra-budget Android phone gives budget sensitive mobile
978-1-4673-8066-9/15/$31.00 ©2015 IEEE
phone customers a new choice beyond feature phones.
With the success of Xiaomi, the questions for other
smartphone companies are: will price become the key to
success? Or the product quality itself is what only
matters?
With the technology advancement, most of the recent
smartphone could have most of the best components. To
balance between many features and limited budget,
consumers may need to consider many items instead of
the shape and size while choosing the right phone to
purchase. Managers will also need to consider the issue of
priority of the features in product design and launch their
next moneymaker. Enterprises may understand the
resource they have, but may not deeply understand the
expectation and thoughts of their existing and potential
customers. To answer this question, there is no better way
than to get opinion directly from the customers.
The purpose of this study aims to examine the
Taiwanese customers’ preferences ranking of smartphone
attributes and the price range preferences. From the
results of this study, the product design/development
department can find the key factors which the next
success smartphone needs, and the right product
positioning. To achieve our goal, a modified Analytic
Hierarchy Process (AHP) method, one of multi-criteria
decision making approaches, is proposed. An online
survey is conducted to collect the consumers' opinion.
Determining the factors which affect smartphone
purchase intention is one of the common research fields
nowadays. Tan and Adli [3] proposed a research using the
AHP framework and DEA method to compare 25
smartphones by considering 19 attributes. In the study of
Işıklar and Büyüközkan [4], AHP is applied to determine
the criteria's' relative weights and TOPSIS for ranking the
alternatives. These two MCDM methods are combined to
evaluate the mobile phone options from the users'
preferences order. The research of Haverila [5] aims to
investigate the mobile phone feature preferences among
Finland male consumers as well as their relationship to
customer satisfaction and repurchase intent of the mobile
phone with regular survey.
II. METHODOLOGY
2.1 Hierarchy Structure of Smartphone Attributes
To achieve a more integrated structure, the
conception of the Value-based Adoption Model (VAM),
proposed by Kim et al. [6], was adopted. In the basic
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 Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE IEEM
concept of the VAM structure, there are two main
categories which affect the perceived value and the
adoption intention: Benefits and Sacrifices. Benefits are
the usefulness and enjoyment for users. Sacrifice includes
two factors: technicality and perceived fee. The concept
of sacrifice is directly adapted into the hierarchy structure
of this study. To focus on the smartphone component, the
benefit category is substituted by the smartphone
attributes which the consumer gets when they purchase
the device. Refer to the researchs by Tan and Adli [3],
Işıklar and Büyüközkan [4], Haverila [5], Hu et al. [7], six
smartphone attributes were collected. The smartphone
attributes were divided in to two groups, the main features
and the additional functions. The smartphone attributes in
were collected from previous research. Three elements of
smartphone were chosen in the “main features” category:
processor performance, battery endurance and memory.
These are the basic elements which makes the phone
functional. The "additional functions" include: display
quality, aesthetic, and camera quality. These three
elements are what make a smartphone more enjoyable.
Last but not least, “sacrifice” is constituted of technicality
and fee and price two factors, which are the main
elements that a customer has to pay for when purchasing a
new smrtphone. This research aims to understand the
focus of smartphone’s product positioning strategy.
Instead of building the brand image and brand value, the
main goal of the product design/development department
is to create the right product. Therefore, “brand” is not
included as one of the attributes.
2.2 Questionnaire Design
This study aims to understand the customer
preference of smartphone attributes. The AHP structure
has chosen to compare different attributes which
consumer may consider during the process of selecting
the suitable smartphone. However, the original AHP
method requires each sub-criterion to be compared one by
one by the scale of 1 to 9. For an application in a
company to make decision and which respondents were
the managers, they will be willing to spend their time and
effort to complete the survey question even though the
process could be complicated. The major focus of the
study is the priority of customer. Therefore, a large
number of smartphone user sample are required. The
process of pair wise compare of all attributes would be
too cumbersome for respondents. Nishizawa [8]
introduced an AHP model with simplified scale, which
has values range from 0 to 2. This adjustment of the
method makes the calculation and ranking process much
simpler, easier yet still practicable. However, it is still
difficult to conduct the survey in large sample size.
Therefore a further simplified AHP method has been
proposed, in pair-wise comparison, one of the two options
must be chosen as the preferred one. For three-factor
question, the ranking orders of these three factors are
provided. The questionnaire is designed to put the
elements into different raking order by a multiple choice
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question. The respondents can choose the order which
most suits their preference. Figure 1 shows one of the
questions in the questionnaire.
2.3 Calculation of the Attribute weighting
The score for each criterion is based on the preference
ranking order. For a three-factor comparison, the relative
preference is assumed to be 5, which is in the middle of
the scale of 1-9. The corresponding comparison matrix is
1 5 5
1⁄5 1 5 (1)
1⁄5 1⁄5 1
and the corresponding eigen vector is
0.5869990
0.2886119 (2)
0.1243891
Therefore, the criterion which is greater than the other
two criteria would have a score of 0.586990. The criterion
which is greater than one criterion would have a score of
0.2886119. The criterion which falls in the bottom will
have a score of 0.1243891. With the similar procedure,
for a two-factor comparison, the scores are 0.8333333 and
0.1677777 for the preferred one and the non-preferred one
respectively. First, the data for each criterion preferences
are converted into the corresponding points and summed
up. Then the score of each criterion is divided by the total
criteria score to serve as the weighting of each sub-
criterion. The formula is:
Criterion weight (3)
Next, repeat the previous same steps with the sub-
criterion data. Finally, the score of each sub-criterion is
multiplied with the corresponding sub-criterion
weighting. The sub-criteria value can obtain through the
calculation process, the preference hierarchy can therefore
be ranked.
Sub criterion weight  
Sub criterion weight (4)
To collect data, a web-based survey was carried out
during March 19th, 2015 through March 23th, 2015 and
389 useful data were collected from Taiwanese
smartphone consumers. There were 54% female and 46%
male, the average respondent age is 25~34. There are 137
(35%) which are students. Other 212 which are non-
student including people from different occupations and
people who are currently unemployed or retired.
 Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE IEEM
III. RESULTS
3.1 Attribute Preference
Hierarchy structure of smartphone attributes and their
corresponding weightings is shown in Figure 2. In the
first level, no surprisingly "Main Features" is the most
important among all three criteria. "Sacrifice" is
considered to be the less important criterion. In the "Main
Features" category, the "Processor Performance" scored
0.2243 which comes in first, following by "Battery
Endurance" which scored 0.13659. The Memory Quality
comes in third with a score of 0.12656. Move on to the
second category, the "Additional Function", the "Display
Quality" scored the 0.11167 which is highest among the
three. The next is "Aesthetic" with a score of 0.09633.
The sub-criterion which got third is "Camera Quality"
with a score of 0.8551. In the "Sacrifice" category, "Fee
and price" scores 0.17175 which is pretty high.
"Technicality", with a score of 0.0437 has the smallest
weighting.
3.2 Price Preference
For further understanding, the respondents were
asked to choose the price range they prefer when purchase
a new smartphone. There are three price ranges to choose
from, under NT$6,000, NT$6,001~15,000 and over
NT$15,000. The lowest one represents smartphones such
as the ASUS Zenfone 5, the HUAWEI Honor 3c or the
Xiaomi RedMi which the suggested retail prices are lower.
The highest option represents the high-priced devices
such as the iPhone series, the SONY Xperia Z3 and the
HTC One M9. Figure 3 shows the results of the price
preferences, only 14% of the respondents prefer to
purchase a low cost smartphone. Furthermore, there are
31% of the respondents prefer purchase high class phones.
The other respondents choose to purchase which the price
is in between. Most phones with better processors
nowadays were priced higher, but considering the income,
less respondent really choose to purchase a smartphone
priced over NT$15,001. In order to compromise between
the budget and the need of processor performance,
smartphone priced between NT$6,001~15,000 become
the better alternative.
IV. DISCUSSION
4.1 Attribute preferences
The Processor Performance comes out by top. “Price
and fee” comes in second although this sub-criterion is in
the least important criteria group. The least important
attribute perceived by the consumers is Technicality. As a
larger percentage of cellular network traffic becomes data
rather than voice, the capabilities of the mobile
application processor that generates this data have become
exponentially more important [9]. A stronger processor
will lead to better and smoother user experience with less
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waiting, this may cause the processor performance to be
place at the top. Price is the amount of money charged for
a product or service, or the sum of the values that
customers exchange for the benefits of having or using the
product or service [10]. And the smartphone is not a
product which consider catchpenny. Therefore people
may think over whether the selling price of the device
suits their budgets before purchasing or not.
4.2 Preference differences among Gender
The differences between the genders of the
respondents have been compared. The male respondents
rated “price”, “battery endurance” and “memory quality”
three elements higher. As for the female respondents, they
consider the “display quality” slightly more important
than the memory quality. Comparing to the male group,
the female respondents gave the three sub-criteria from
the “Additional Functions” category (which are display
quality, aesthetic and camera quality) higher scores.
This shows that male respondents tend to focus on
the money they spent and the main features which affect
the capacity of the device more. Female consumers tend
to care more about the smartphone attributes that bring
visual enjoyments during the using process. Therefore, if
a company wants to launch a smartphone designed for
female consumers, they can consider featuring the phone
with better display, higher camera quality or with special
designed physical appearance.
V. CONCLUSION
The study aims to understand the customers'
preferences ranking of smartphone attributes and price
range preferences. With the modified AHP method, the
smartphone attributes has been compared. First, the
results show that the most important attribute is
considered to be the processor performance followed by
the Price. Secondly, the most preferred price is between
NT$6,000~15,000. Companies should consider designing
smartphone within this price range and installed with high
end processor.
This modified AHP structure is helpful in determining
certain amount of elements and conducting the preference
ranking within a big survey population. Product such as
TV, motorcycle, or even automobile can be used with this
method. Moreover, the simplified calculation process can
also be applied in ANP method since the AHP and ANP
method has similar calculation and pairwise comparison
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society,” European Journal of Scientific Research, vol. 98,
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[2] D. Wang, Z. Xiang, and D. R. Fesenmaier, “Adapting to the
mobile world: A model of smartphone use,” Annals of
Tourism Research, vol. 48, pp. 11-26, 2014.
 Proceedings of the 2015 IEEE IEEM

[3] T. L. Peaw, and A. Mustafa, “Incorporating AHP in DEA
analysis for smartphone comparisons,” Proceedings of the
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Principles of marketing, 6th ed., Pearson Australia, 2014.

Figure 1. Example Question in Questionnaire

Figure 2. Hierarchy Structure of Smartphone Attributes and Their Corresponding Weightings

Figure 3. Price Preferences of Smartphone Buyers

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