Usage analysis of a mobile bargain finder application

Abstract

Mobile shopping applications for smartphones are popular among consumers. While mobile commerce research has focused on experimental prototypes and evaluation in small groups, only little is known about the real-world usage of these applications. Established tools and methods for analysis are missing. In this paper, we present the usage analysis of a mobile bargain finder application based on server logs of more than 98,000 users over a period of 6 months. We show that plots of the cumulative distribution function (CDF) are well suited to analyze the distribution of relevant parameters and present simple heuristics to identify active users. We can show that Pareto's law applies to the distribution of user requests. We also propose metrics to measure usage focus and find that active users tend to become more focused with increased usage. Finally, we combine the results from the log analysis with demographics from an online user survey. © 2012 Springer-Verlag.