A Mobile Participatory Framework for the Consumer Decision Process

With the recent advances in mobile technologies, the role of mobile information systems has been increasing within the consumer behavior domain. Accordingly, we propose a holistic framework which supports consumers on all stages of the consumer decision process by using the participatory sensing approach. The consumer decision process is the major part of the consumer behavior, and represents the set of stages a consumer follows when purchasing a product. On the other hand, participatory sensing is a recently developed approach in the mobile information systems domain, and enables users to be directly involved especially in the data collection, analysis and sharing processes through their mobile phones. The proposed framework is designed to incorporate this significant capability of participatory sensing into the consumer behavior domain. The aim of designing this framework is to build an effective, time and cost saving mobile information system for consumers by supporting their decision process. In addition to designing the framework, a working prototype is developed using mobile phones in order to show the applicability of the proposed framework. The obtained results are also presented with an overview of existing related studies. This study is also intended to serve as a base for further studies regarding the effective use of the participatory sensing approach and mobile information systems in the consumer behavior domain.