What do you want from your smart watch?

New research published in the International Journal of Mobile Communications has surveyed customers regarding their use of branded apps on their smartwatches. The analysis of the survey results reveals the external factors that influence the intention to use and tracks the relationship between factors using a technology acceptance model.

Meuel Jeong, Kyeongjin Park, and Kyungdoh Kim of the Department of Industrial Engineering at Hongik University in Seoul, South Korea, also analyzed to survey data to reveal what kinds of smartwatch brand apps users would use and found music, weather information, basic telephone function, social networking, navigation, basic text messaging, productivity, and health were most commonly used. Apps for reading e-books, playing games, associated with sports, entertainment, QR code/barcode recognition, finance, photography, and video were not so popular on smartwatches.

Such insights feed into how brands can best engage with putative customers knowing that they favor certain types of apps on their smartwatches and not others.

They suggest that companies hoping to engage customers through brand apps need to ensure that the app is as easy to use as possible and offering low complexity and no financial risk. They point out that there is a market for those kinds of apps already being used but suggests that certain other kinds of apps that are perhaps more suited to smartphones and tablets not be pursued as avenues for marketing and increasing brand awareness on smartwatches, such as QR code/barcode recognition apps, financial apps and photo and video apps.