Selection of smart phone plans

With the increasing popularity of smart phones, mobile carriers have been launching various mobile communication plans providing voice, text, data and other services. The changes are primarily influenced by the increasing usage of smart phones. The usage extended beyond the traditional voice communication to the massive utilization of text messaging, and the exponential increase in data usage; including services to other types of mobile devices like hotspot [1] capabilities. The goal of this paper is to create an empirical model that incorporates quantitative and qualitative criteria for evaluation and selection of the best individual smartphone plan. This hierarchical model creates a quantitative framework applying semi-absolute scale to measure the value of each factor that contributes to the overall score of a plan. It integrates the relative desirability of the factors in the decision-making criteria with their priority assigned by the experts. The developed model with four levels of Objectives, Criteria, Factors and Plan desirability measures decode the complicated process of evaluating available smartphone plans. The result of the process is a subjective score that provides a relative desirability measure that helps with the selection of the best plan for each user category. In the effort to stay objective and away from personal preferences, this model is studying individual plans and not considering the phone hardware as well as the provider.