In today’s society, mobile applications are becoming more popular and providing several advantages. However, users will resist using a product regardless of how well-tested or solid it is if the wrong requirements are implemented. Understanding the factors that influence the purchase of mobile applications can provide useful information for mobile application design and development. Hence, the purpose of this research is to better understand the impact of consumption values on customers in order to identify the software requirements for a mobile application. This study analyzes the possible behavioral changes of similar groups of university students in a five-year period. For this purpose, a questionnaire is administered to engineering faculty students in 2017 (46 females and 66 males) and 2021 (45 females and 90 males) to better understand customer behavioral changes. The findings highlight the significance of conditional value in customer behavior when purchasing mobile applications. Even though the other consumption values were found to have a negligible effect, there is some evidence indicating that the impact of consumption values on different target customer groups may vary considering their gender and familiarity with apps. Further research needs to be conducted to better understand the possible impact of age, cultural differences, education levels, and special considerations such as visually impaired people. Therefore, this study encourages mobile application designers and developers to raise awareness for the effect of consumption values such as conditional value on their customers’ mobile application purchasing behaviors. The possible impact of the consumption values needs to be deeply understood, specifically for the target customer groups, and it should be considered in the software requirements specification (SRS), which is one of the important principles that allow software under consideration for development to function. As a result, a better understanding of consumption values will help developers design and develop better applications by specifying software requirements and marketing strategies.