eThesis - School of Business electronic theses

Objective

The objective of this thesis is to advance the understanding of perceived value in the context of branded apps. By understanding what type of value consumers seek from branded apps helps companies decide what type of app features to include when designing branded apps. Branded apps are a highly potential channel for customer engagement but without providing any real value to users they are non-effective marketing channel.

Methodology

This study includes two phases. First factor analysis is run, as the purpose is to identify different types of value dimensions that are appropriate when deriving value from branded apps. The second part of the study focuses on examining whether there are any differences between product categories when evaluating the importance of each value dimension. Thus, multivariate analysis of variance is used in the second phase of the study.

Findings

The findings of the study suggests that the type of value sought from branded apps can be divided into five dimensions (social, utilitarian, convenience, monetary and intrinsic enjoyment) and the impact of product category on the importance of value dimensions is only moderate. Altogether functional values were considered the most important ones across different product categories, which implies that branded apps are mainly used for functional purposes.