The analysis of customers’ purchasing activities, their preferences and
future potential are the subject of interest of many experts in the field of marketing.
Smartphones became the common devices used during purchasing process. By
examining purchasing behavior of smartphone owners, the valuable insights useful for
modeling new selling strategies could be mined. The main objective of this study is to
analyze different behavioral patterns of smartphone users during the pre-purchase
stage of the purchase process. To achieve these goal, we analyzed the data from
Consumer Barometer containg data for 56 countries and 78,920 respondents. We
created 3 new latent variables – factors - while reducing the number of variables (11)
entering the cluster analysis by using factor analysis. Subsequently, using the cluster
analysis and the method of k-medians, we created four clusters of users. Even though
there are more active and less active clusters, the most popular activities involved
getting store directions and checking where to buy a certain product. Users from
European countries (represented by Cluster 1 and 2) use smartphones in the prepurchase
process very little, showing conservative approach towards smartphones in
these countries. On the other hand, users in Cluster 3 and 4 seem to be the most active
smartphone users in terms of purchasing process.