A Use And Gratification Study Of Mobile Phone Application From Intecrultural And Gender Perspectives

With the rapid development of Internet technology, we now enter into a new age of MobileInternet use. When the initiative of users is emphasized by an interactive digital media, itbecomes important to study the dynamics of both the Mobile Web and its users. Based onthe Mobile Web platform and mobile devices, mobile applications now penetrate our dailylife at an unpredictable speed. Questions like how and why people use these informationtools become important while urgent to be clarified for studying mobile applications andMobile Web from the communication perspective.By using theUses and Gratifications theory, this research aims at examining the presentsituation of users’ opinions and attitudes towards mobile phones (or smart phone)Application including the reasons why they use these Apps and how much do they feelsatisfied with these applications. By examining seven dimensions——demographic andinformation, user habits, user behaviors, preferable categories, personal demands,satisfaction and reliability of the Apps, this paper adopts interdisciplinary theories andempirical methodologies to compares the male and female users, and Chiense andAmerican users, to find out the similarities and differences within the two groups.Results show that, when using mobile applications, the taken-for-granted gap betweenmales and females users is diminishing in that female users are more willing to try this newmedia. From the intercultural comparison, it can be found that Chinese users focus more ontheir entertainment interests or needs whereas American users have a stronger focus onacquiring information and facilitating life convenience. Meanwhile, Hofstede’s six culturaldimensions are used to analyze the differences and similarities. Results show thatIndividualism/Collectivism, Long/Short-term Orientation and Indulgence-Restraint havesome impact on the usage and gratifications process in China and America.