Factors Influencing Customer’s Buying Decisions on Mobile Phone Buyers: A Study on Bijapur City, India

Mobile phone or Cellphone - marked a powerful thrust of modern technology into people's life and workplaces. It is a link in the chain of fast and ubiquitously accessible tool of the new era. It came with a bang in India, had a halting start, thanks to the ill-defined regulatory mechanism, but is now well entrenched for a steady, speedy growth.

India has already emerged as the second largest market for mobile phone handsets in the world after China. The presence of a large number of international handset manufacturers in India, including Apple, Samsung, LG, Sony Ericsson, Motorola, and numerous new players such as Xiaomi, LYF, Videocon, Lenovo, Micromax, Asus, Oppo and Karbon shows that the competition will grow even more intense in coming years.

Globally, as in India, Samsung is the most popular cellphone with more than one-third of the market share followed by Apple, Xiaomi etc which is a distant second.The large share of China and India in the global market are considered indicative of many things: the march towards modernisation, accelerated growth, technology absorption & adoption, the impact of the numbers, critical significance of telecommunication development, advances achieved by nations with the largest number of poor and uneducated people. In this new era with affordable 3G, 4G and other variety of services that can be performed by laptops & PCs are incorporated into smartphones these days. It’s been challenging for the manufacturer to positions their handsets to the customers who are value driven.

This study has been designed with an intention to identify the factors that might affect the customer’s choice in buying a mobile phone. It focuses on the possible reason that the customers consider while making a purchase decision of phone.

In the study done on the effect of promotional activities on the brand decision in mobile phone industry by Liu (2002) The factors affecting buying decision of customer on the mobile phone in Asia were analysed. The study found that the choice of mobile phone brand was based on two different attitudes. These two different attitudes were the attitude toward the mobile phone and attitude towards the network. The most influencing factors while purchasing the mobile phone were new features in the mobile phone other than the bigger screen, size and enhanced capacity.

Wilska (2003) in this study on consumer decision on buying mobile phone depended on rational and emotional factors. Most of the customers were influenced by both emotional and rational factors. Emotional factor were (applications, camera, game, and music) besides rational factors (communication and time management) the study found that young customers preferred more emotion factors as compared to other factors.

Heikki ,Jari, Manne, Timmo and Marrijuka (2005) in this study the factor affecting consumer choice of mobile phone. This study was carried out in Finland in their study they concluded that mobile phone market is the most turbulent market in the present scenario. They focused on customer buying decisions process and they shed light on the factors that were affecting consumer choices. They found in their study that when the consumer bought a mobile phone the technical problems were the main factor to change their mobile phone. There were factors as well which were affecting the actual choice of mobile phone i.e., brand, price, interface and properties.

(Chirag V. Erda, 2008) Concluded that there is no significant difference in price and style consciousness between rural and urban consumers but there was a significant difference of functions, quality and brand consciousness between rural and urban customers for buying a mobile phone

Mohankumar and Dinesh Kumar (2008) a study on customer purchase behaviour toward mobile phone with reference to erode city in India. This study was conducted on purchase behaviour towards mobile phone. The customers are the buyer who wants happiness from the product utility. The customer would like to touch and feel the product when they buy. From this study, it’s clear that factors influenced their buying behaviour while choosing a mobile phone. This study also helps to know the satisfaction level of customer toward different mobile phones.

While price and features were the most influential factors affecting the purchase of a new mobile phone, its network accessibility, clarity was also regarded as the most important factors in the choice of the mobile phones (Sheetal Singla, 2010).

Factor influence of product attribute on the mobile phone in university among undergraduate student in Kenya was conducted by Malasi (2012). The researcher found that there were various attribute which influenced the undergraduate students on the various brand. Like as colour, name visibility, and mobile phone of the different model, safety, physical appearance, design and price of the mobile phone.

Mesay sata (2013) conducted a study to understand the factor affecting consumer buying behaviour on mobile phone devices hawassa town. There were so many factors which influenced the buying behaviour. But researcher found six important factors such as price, brand name, product feature, social group, after sale services and durability. From that, it's clear the above factor work as a motivational force that influences for a mobile phone purchase decision.

The data was gathered with the help of questionnaires within Bijapur City, Karnataka State, India in Jan 2015. Questionnaire was used as the main data collection instrument. The structured questionnaire was designed so as to make it easy for the respondents to answer and to cover most of the common research questions. The method of sampling was convenient sampling; the sample was based on non-probability data. The questionnaire was based on Likert 5 point scale. The sample of the study consisted of 240. Unfortunately, 40 questionnaires were not responded appropriately, so the analysis is based on 200 respondents from Bijapur City.

The data from the below table indicate that the sample is equal in terms of both male and female respondents as they are indicated by 50 percent for both. Analysis of age of the respondents signifies that majority of the respondents fall in the age group of 19-25 years as it was indicated by 18 percent respondents from the sample. Occupation indicates that respondents in service and students category are 60 that indicate 30 percent for both and Business and Housewives include 40 respondents each that indicate 20 percent. In the case of income level, the most respondents fall under the income level of above 20000 that shows 30.5 percent.

The result obtained from 200 respondents had been analysed thoroughly and the outputs of the results had been clearly explained in this part. To analyse the strength of association among different variables the Kaiser-Mayer-Olkin (KMO) measure of sampling adequacy has been applied. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy was computed to ascertain the suitability of factor analysis being used. It certifies whether the data are suitable to perform factor analysis. The value of KMO varies from 0-1 and high values (closer to 1.0) generally indicates that a factor analysis can be useful with the data. KMO score should be 0.6 to be adequate for testing. KMO score .897 indicates adequacy for testing.

Applying SPSS, the principal component analysis (PCA) was carried out to explore the underlying factors associated with 31 items. The above table shows that 65.88% of variation in mobile purchasing by the customers is explained by seven factors.

The above table indicates the number of factors that affect customers while choosing a mobile phone brand. From rotation method the following seven factors (table 5) may be obtained.

It is the most important factor. It can explain 30.9 % of total variance in customer decisions of purchasing a mobile phone. Physical attributes consist of all the physical characteristics of mobile phone like camera, 4G, Memory, attractiveness etc.

It is the second factor which is able to explain 10.4 % of total variance. This second factor of pricing includes all the price related factors that the customers consider before buying mobile phones. It states that the customers’ psychology of Bijapur city that influences buyer’s decisions of purchasing a mobile phone.

This is the third most important factor. It can explain 6.6% of total variance. Charging and User friendliness are taken into consideration while customers purchase mobile phones.

It is the fourth factor that explains 5.9 % of total variance. There are several numbers of respondents who generally take the size and weight as an important factor in buying a mobile phone.

This is the fifth factor which explains 4.4 % of total variance. Some respondents tend to take suggestions from their friends and social group before purchasing mobile phones.

It is the sixth factor which is able to explain 4.0 % of total variance in customer’s decision of purchasing a mobile phone.

The last factor explains 3.4 % of total variance. It illustrates that customers make the purchase decision based on advertisement aired in various media.

The research objective was to identify the underlying factors which have a role in deciding the brands while customers purchase a mobile phone. It has been found from the Previous argument that there are plenty of variables customers would consider before choosing, a particular brand of mobile phone. Some of the factors influence heavily on customers’ decisions while others have a comparatively lesser impact on the purchase decision. At the time of the survey, it was observed that various types of services are expected by the customers. But this research work does not deal with the customer expectation. To a certain extent, it has tried to spotlight on the issues that the customers judge in the present market scenario. The research has identified that many factors were considered as selection criteria of a mobile phone. Not essentially all the variables influence a person a particular way and to the same extent. In the case of choosing a branded mobile phone, factors taken in to consideration by customers are price, physical attributes, charging and user friendliness, size, weight, friends and social group recommendations, neighbors recommendations and advertising.