Smartphone Effect on Shoppers: How Mobile Information Storage Influences Price Knowledge

Researchers have recently raised concerns about the harmful effects of external information storage on memory. At the same time, new and emerging mobile technologies have led to the increasing capacity and convenience of external memory aids. Our research investigates the effects of mobile information storage on consumers’ price knowledge. Results from our two studies suggest that consumers who think that the price information will be available on their smartphones show lower price recall scores than a control group without available price information. In addition, we find that the level of general mobile information storage influences consumers’ explicit price knowledge negatively, while implicit price knowledge remains unaffected. Finally, we show that less price-conscious consumers are more strongly affected by the smartphone effect than are price-conscious customers. Implications for consumers, companies, information systems design and further research as well as limitations of the study are discussed.