RealityMine has been passively collecting consumer behaviour analytics and turning them into a series of Consumer Insights. In this latest Insight we look at how consumers’ use of mobile devices changes depending on whether they are connected to a WiFi or cellular network.*
For network providers and market research companies it’s important to know how mobile use differs based on the type of network connection. Network providers rely on offering competitive data plans to attract and retain customers, so it’s imperative that they are meeting consumer demands.
The chart below show how long on average consumers use various applications on a daily basis, split by when their mobile device was on either a WiFi or cellular network.
We can see that there is certainly a difference in the length of time spent on various apps, depending upon the type of connection at the time. However we can also see that the nature and content of the app has more influence on session length than network type. The next graph illustrates this point even more clearly as we can see that the gap between any two rings in the same column appears negligible when compared to the difference between categories.
Interestingly there is not a definitive ‘winner’ from the visualisations we have looked at so far in terms of WiFi and cellular use, with both of them having higher use within different categories of application.
We can now look at the variation between the two network types for each category to determine possible behavioural cases which may help to explain these results.
Overall, 8 out of the 15 categories show greater use on average when connected to the internet via WiFi. This is a much more even split than we would possibly expect, yet when we analyse the results there is some logic to these findings.
Social Networking sees the largest variance in favour of Wi-Fi and can be attributed to the way people use sites like Facebook, Twitter or Vine. Consumers are likely to use these sites differently when at home/work or when out and about. In a relaxed atmosphere at home, when they have more time and are also more likely to be connected to WiFi, longer more investigatory sessions will be seen. When they are using these apps via a cellular connection, probably during their daily commute or when participating in a leisure activity, they may just use the app to ‘check-in’ or send a tweet about what they are doing.
The same pattern can be attributed to the other categories, with longer sessions being more likely when in a relaxed environment. The app categories which show longer use on cellular connections tend to be functional apps which would be used more outside the home or office, for example Travel/Maps apps which may be used as an alternative to sat-nav devices.
Interestingly shopping apps also show longer average use when connected to a cellular network – this could be an indication that consumers are using these apps when in shopping centres or on high streets to compare in-store and online prices.
One final useful insight would be to see if there is any difference in this pattern between males and females.
On this chart the space between circles in each category indicates variance in use over connection type. Whilst we can see variance between the categories, we can also see that there is a greater difference between average daily duration in males than in females. This could be an indication that males are more conscious of data allowance than females. Alternatively it could be an indication that males’ mobile behaviour is simply more varied across locations, and that females’ mobile behaviour is more consistent.
*Analysis based on research carried out amongst 1145 panelists across a two month period. RealityMine used mobile passive behaviour tools to monitor participants’ usage.
