Factors influencing the purchase of security software for mobile devices - Case study

We investigated whether we could nudge users to purchase a premium version of mobile security software after using a trial version for 2-3 months. Our three interface designs used two persuasion methods: two decoy interfaces that attempted to nudge users to purchasing longer duration licenses, and one interface that used reciprocity in order to determine the value that people associated with the security software. We had approximately 60,000 participants for our study who completed a questionnaire, and again we had approximately 60,000 who were exposed to proposed variants. There were 12,000 participants who intersected both data samples, from which we also analyzed purchase decision patterns across our wide participant range, including users of English, German, Slovak, and Czech language versions. Our results indicate that factors such as gender, age, home country, and attitudes towards privacy and data sensitivity each had a significant impact on whether or not a premium license was purchased.