Predicting Product Pricing, Versions, Sales Via Maps of Interactions of Cultures of Devices & Users

Abstract

Questions: How can we develop a way to measure the culture of devices, technologies, and products? What modifications of the dimensions of difference between cultures of nations, organizations, and professions would extend them to measurement of the culture of devices? Once device cultures become measurable, would interactions between them and cultures of users help us predict sales, profits, future versions, and competitive outcomes among products competing in markets? Method: A pilot study on a small unrepresentative sample of smartphone users was done. 64 dimensions of difference of cultures of any type, that were developed originally for comparing organization, market, and business practice cultures, were extended to handle measurement of the culture of devices and users, using what kinds of action and reaction features of any device afford and effect. Applied to specify the culture of the iPhone 4S (split into calling functions, data functions, interface functions, cognitive help functions, social index expansion functions) and to specify the culture of iPhone4S and Galaxy III users (split into the same five types of functions) interactions between these thusly specified cultures were obtained. Helps and hindrances in device cultures for user functions were obtained. Most salient misfits were calculated and used to predict new features of the iPhone 5. Results: Sample limitations permitted only qualitative relations — most numerous and/or extreme misfits noticed did correspond to 2 of 3 next features of smartphones and who (which users) switched vendors. This suggest further research with large more representative samples is warranted.

Keywords: culture dimensions, 192 dimensions of cultures, types of culture, culture densities, culture interactions, transplanting X across cultures