Mobile Phone Buying Factors and Motivation Research Paper

Introduction

When planning to purchase a cell phone, there are a number of factors that one must take into consideration. One may easily end up with a product that does not meet expectations because of the failure to plan. In this paper, the researcher will look at concepts that should be considered when purchasing a cell phone.

Tentative problem statement

Failing to identify the reasons why one is motivated to buy a given product is one of the major reasons why people end up purchasing wrong cell phones that they only use for a short period. This paper seeks to address this problem by identifying the reasons that can make an individual to buy a given phone.

Research objectives

The following are the research objectives that should be achieved:

• To identify the reasons why a person is motivated to buy a cell phone.
• To define planning activities that one should observe before buying a cell phone.

Motivating Factors When Buying a Cell Phone

Problem Statement

Customer decision-making process is one of the critical stages that marketers always try to influence. Marketers use persuasive marketing communications to convince the targeted audience that they should buy a given product instead of other existing brands. According to Hogg, M. A., & Cooper, J. (2003), some marketers would end up exaggerating the value offered by their products just to convince their target customers to purchase a given product. The massive advertisements that consumers come across would end up confusing them. This confusion makes it difficult to come up with an independent decision that is not skewed in any way in favor of a given brand.

According to Health (2004). A buyer will always have a positive attitude towards brands that are making impact to the lives of public. A good example is the cell phone market. Apple Inc., Samsung, and Nokia are some of the top brands in the cell phone market. Each of these three brands always comes up with unique promotional messages to convince their audience that their products offer the best value. In this research project, the researcher seeks to identify concepts that one should consider when planning to purchase a cell phone. Xu, J. (2005) stated that a marketing manager must evaluate various methods of marketing with the aim of identifying the strategies which have the necessary impacts on the target audience. This way, less efficient strategies can be easily avoided to save the cost of marketing a brand or product.

Research Objectives

Making decisions when planning to purchase a given product is always one of the biggest challenges that individuals face when planning to buy a product. That is why many firms have come up with attractive advertisements to influence the decision of buyers in favor of their products. In most of the cases, the messages presented in the adverts are skewed, making it difficult for consumers to make the right decisions. According to Verhoef, P. C., Lemon, K. N., Morgan, R. M., Parish, J. T., &Deitz, G. (2015), most of the cases, buyers always rely on the referrals from friends and relatives when making decisions to purchase a given product. In addition, Boyle, G., Saklofske, D., & Matthews, G. (2014) stated that one’s personality can help his purchasing pattern. Van, H. M. (2007) stated that firms are finding it easy to market their products on platforms such as Facebook and YouTube because these media have massive influnce on the buyers’ decision making processes. The following are the objectives of this research:

• To identify the factors that influence consumers buying behaviors when planning to buy a cell phone.
• To determine the impact of promotional messages in the media on consumers buying behaviors.
• To develop plans that can help consumers improve in decision-making processes when planning to buy a cell phone.

Literature Review

Cell phones are occupying a very unique position in the life of people in the modern society. According to Hastings, Angus and Bryant (2011), cell phones have become basic needs in the society irrespective of one’s social status. The product is no longer a preserve for the rich. It is the most reliable and convenient mode of communication in use today. This explains why the market for cell phones has experienced a massive growth over the past 15 years. According to Katz, J. E. (2008), Mobile communication has become mainstream and even omnipresent. It is arguably the most successful and certainly the most rapidly adopted new technology in the world. Top brands such as Apple Inc. and Samsung have perfected the art of making Smartphone with very unique features. These phones offer more than just a means of communication. According to Kotler, P., & Armstrong, G. (2010), one of the buyer’s responses is the brand choice. They should enable users to go online and perform activities that were previously done only through personal computers.

Kim (2015) stated that these new state-of-the-art cell phones have been developed out of extensive research. Mobile phone manufacturers have been keen on gathering information from their clients through regular researches. The research enables them to understand the emerging needs of their clients and the problems they have with their current phones. For instance, one of the issues that were raised by some of the first users of Smartphone was its limited battery life. In response to this complaint, Apple Inc. responded by developing high quality batteries that could last for over one week without the need for a recharge. Samsung and Nokia followed the same path. According to Rajagopal (2009), whenever these firms come up with unique products, they are always quick to inform their clients about it so that they can influence customers’ buying behavior. This has complicated the decision-making process of many customers.

According to Bearden, W. O., &Netemeyer, R. G. (1999), one of the major factors that one should consider when planning to purchase a cell phone is its functionality. The functionality of a cell phone refers to the services it offers to the user. A good phone should have high operation speed, offer quality images, and enable the user to go online. It should enable the user to go online and use e-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube without the need of using personal computers. Some phones may be very slow when the user goes online, especially in heavy sites such as YouTube. A good phone should be able to overcome this challenge.

When buying a phone, people prefer storing most of their data in their mobile phones for easy accessibility. It is common for a person to have his academic credentials stored in electronic form in their phones. The same phone is expected to store music and videos meant for entertainment. This requires a phone with large storage capacity. According to Lubin (2015) on the battery lifespan, a mobile phone is becoming one of the most popular entertainment gadgets because of its portability. However, these phones can only provide the needed services if they have battery with a longer life-span.

The social status of an individual may be a limiting factor that one must consider when purchasing a phone (Zarrella, 2009). Some of the top brands of cell phone cost as much as $ 1500. This is definitely out of reach for most of members of the society whose earnings are relatively low. Zarrella and Zarrella (2010) stated that the phone should be durable and able to support some of the modern phone apps that have become very popular among the youths. Customers should make an effort to avoid being misled to purchasing a product that does not meet the set expectations. Most of the cell phone companies are out to make money.

Kim (2015) stated that one of the ways of overcoming the misleading facts which are in the media is to use trusted websites which rank cell phone brands based on the quality they offer. A good example is Forbes magazine. Fortune magazine is also becoming very reliable in providing unbiased information about various brands in the market. These websites may help the buyer to make a decision on the best brand of phone to buy because they not only classify them based on the quality but also state their market prices. With this information at hand, one can then make a decision on the most appropriate product to buy based on the budget and specific needs.

Tentative Design Strategies

When conducting this research, it will be important to have clearly defined design strategies on how data shall be collected, the process through which it shall be processed, and how it will be presented to provide clear and coherent information that can be used by other people when making their decisions. Research design helps to explain the specific activities that a researcher will be involved with and how time will be planned effectively to achieve the desired result. The following are the steps that the researcher will follow when conducting research.

Defining the area of study

The first step will be to define the area of study. When conducting research, it is always important to understand the specific area of study that the investigation will focus on. At this initial stage of our study, the proposed area of focus will be the university community.

Collecting data

After defining the scope of primary data collection, the next step will be to define the types of data that will be collected. In this study, the researcher intended to use both the primary and secondary sources of data. The secondary data will be obtained from books and journal articles in the school library. The researcher will also use reliable online sources. Secondary data will help in giving this study a global perspective. It will help in understanding how the issue affects people from various parts of the world and how they are dealing with it. It will also help the researcher to develop a solid foundation for this study. The primary data will be collected from a sample of students within the defined area of scope.

The researchers will interview a number of students to get to understand how they are dealing with the challenge of making a decision when purchasing a cell phone. The researcher will develop an interview questions to help in the data collection process. Most of the questions to be used in the study will be structured to facilitate qualitative data analysis. The interest will be to determine the pattern of decision-making when students are planning to purchase a cell phone. The researchers will collect data from selected number of students. The selected data helps to ensure that the researchers does not influence the process of choosing respondents who shall take part in the study. The strategy is also meant to enhance reliability and validity of the study.

Data analysis

This study will take a qualitative research approach. The researcher wishes to conduct a qualitative market research. The analysis will involve the use of case studies to explain specific patterns of decision when students are planning to buy a cell phone.

Data presentation

The analyzed data will be presented as case studies to respond to the research question. The researcher will then proceed to write the entire report based on the findings.

The Design of the Instrument

To collect data, the researchers will interview a group of 5-6 CBU students of different age and both genders in Cape Breton library room. In order to create a free atmosphere, the participants will be provided with snacks and drinks (water and coffee).

Interview Questions

1. Other than calling and texting, what do you use your phone for?
2. What type of feature you look for when you purchase new phone?
3. How you make your decision when you buy a phone?
4. From your own experience, do you think people make their decision depends on the price of the phone? (Does that affect you, explain how)
5. Where do you buy your phone?
6. Where do you make your comparison? How many stores do you visit?
7. Why you do not like your phone?
8. Why do you like your phone?
9. If there is one thing you can add to change in your phone what would it be?
10. What kind of packages come with your phone?
11. Are you brand loyal? Why?
12. After your contract period is over, what would you do with the phone?

It is known that interview is a good method to understand a customer’s decision-making process. The aim of the interview will be to understand how the participants make a decision to buy a phone and then to find a pattern of decision-making. The researchers have worked out a set of 12 interview questions (listed above). However, this will be an in-depth interview, which means that the participants will not merely have to answer the questions. They will express their opinion on the problem, talk about their own experiences, give detailed information to the researchers. It is also useful to arrange a preliminary meeting to explain what will be at the interview (Englander, 2012, p. 27).

To make the participants freely express their thoughts, the interview will be informal. It means that the researchers will rely on their list of questions as a general outline, but they will encourage a free discussion (guiding it gently to their purpose), and if additional questions appear during the interview, these questions will be used as well. This type of interview is useful for this research since it is flexible and allows to understand the experiences of consumers better (Turner, 2010, p. 755-756).

The interview will take no longer than 2 hours for the following reasons. First, the researchers want the participants to feel free, so the interview should not make them tired. Second, in-depth interviews are generally time-intensive (Boyce and Neale, 2006, p. 3-4). The researchers consider that the chosen sample size (5-6 persons) will allow to work out a decision-making pattern after the analysis of data. The interview will be recorded since it will be a free discussion and the answers will be hard to write down.

Data Treatment and Analysis

The final phase of the research will be the analysis of data, which will be done to understand, what reasons motivate an individual to buy a cell phone. The analysis of data will be performed in four stages. First, the researchers will fulfil the initial interpretation of the information received during the interview. Second, the researchers will develop category titles for the answers to each of the twelve questions listed and assign information to these labels. Third, case studies will be conducted to make the image fuller and the research unbiased. Finally, the researchers will make comparisons, contrast the information, and look for patterns. The patterns will be identified and demonstrated.

The Initial Interpretation of Data

The process of data analysis begins immediately after the interview is finished. To maintain the quality, legibility, and integrity of the collected data, one of the team members will have to regularize the data. He will review all the notes taken during the interview and transcribe the recording. Next, he will summarize and interpret the information (McCormack, 2000, p. 283-284).

The additional purpose of this stage is to avoid ambiguity in the research results. It is important to preserve the context of the discussion while the researchers still remember it, because after some time passes, it will be hard to reconstruct the course of the discussion. Therefore, it is important to edit the information according to that context. It is no less important to write down all the commentaries that appeared in the minds of the researchers while they still remember them. These commentaries need to be edited as well.

As a result of working on this stage, the chosen team member will produce a report, which will contain all the relevant information about the course of the interview, the atmosphere, the participants and their characteristics, the answers given, the reactions of the researchers, etc. The report will contain the following three parts. First, the record part: it will contain nothing more than the edited information collected during the interview, without any remarks. Second, analysis: the results of an initial analysis of the researchers will be described. Third, conclusions: it will contain general conclusions and ideas related to the future work with the data.

Assigning the Information to Categories

The next step in the present research will be assigning the obtained information to certain categories. During the interview, the researchers received the information that can be seen as the answers to twelve questions (considering that it was more of a free discussion). These twelve questions generally present three main thematic blocks: the use of a cell phone, the expectations of consumers from a cell phone, and the process of making a decision to buy a cell phone. The researchers developed a number of categories related to each thematic block, as well as a precise description for each category. The answers given by the participants will be assigned to those categories (Folkestad, 2008, p. 4-5).

The use of a cell phone

This block contains the information about the purposes, for which the participants use cell phones. The categories in this block are the following:

1. Communication. Phones are used for calling and texting, not including social webs.
2. Social media. Includes texting and calls via social media and posting information.
3. Recording. Taking photos, recording videos and audios.
4. Music. Listening to music.
5. Topographic orientation. Using maps and navigators to find unfamiliar topographic objects.
6. File storage. Keeping various files.
7. Other.

The expectations of consumers from a cell phone

This block contains the requirements, which the participants have to a cell phone they would want to have or buy. The block contains the following categories:

1. Price. Relatively low price or the presence of a discount.
2. Accessories. Free and high-quality accessories that go with a phone: headphones, phone case, etc., not counting an SD card.
3. Memory. Enough phone memory and/or an SD card.
4. Image and sound. A high quality of image and sound.
5. Design. Convenient shape (easy to hold in a hand) and an attractive design. Suitable weight.
6. Battery. Long battery life (an amount of time a battery works before it has to be recharged). Long battery lifespan (time a battery works before you need a new battery). Short charge time.
7. The speed of response. A phone reacts quickly for a user’s choices.
8. Endurance. A phone works well for at least two years before it needs to be replaced.
9. Easy to use. The interface is user-friendly and allows to understand how to use this phone in a few hours.
10. Extra requirements to endurance. A phone is waterproof, resistant to impact, etc.
11. Dual. A phone has two SIM card slots.
12. Other.

The process of making a decision to buy a cell phone

This block contains various categories related to the decision-making process. Each category has two subcategories: what the participants say about themselves and what they think about other people (customers in general). The categories are the following:

1. Brand preference. The participant prefers buying a production of a certain brand and/or thinks others do.
2. Spontaneous decision. Buying a phone is a sudden decision or little time is spend on making such a decision.
3. Planned decision. Buying a phone is a well-informed decision, and a customer spends a lot of time researching and planning a purchase.
4. Replacement. The most common cause for a customer to buy a new phone is a need to replace the old one.

Case Studies

Considering that the participants will be of different age and gender, and the number of participants is not very high, it is a good idea to perform case studies for each participant. Case studies will have two purposes. First, they will make the research more comprehensive since they will help to demonstrate how personal features of the participants may influence their choices and opinions. Second, they will make the image fuller. A case study template will contain the following information: age, gender, background, major (minor if available), interests, family details, life goals, future career plans, employment (job position if employed), etc.

Conclusion

Finally, the researchers will make a conclusion, in which they will demonstrate the course of their work, summarize their findings, each team member will present his interpretations. The researchers will explain their way of analysing data and present a worked out hypothesis.

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