Consumer Decision-Making Process For Samsung Galaxy Feel Mobile Phone

Theoretical framework

The statement as-‘Consumer/customer is the king’ –is totally true in all senses. Nowadays the growth and business success for any corporation is based on its customer satisfaction levels that it can attend (Tom, 2007). A decision can be defined as the action based on logical and sensitive selection from two or more choices or options to satisfy their requirements. Consumer purchase decision revolves around purchase of goods and services from various alternatives that are available. It involves the learning regarding the choice of the specific customers, these are what to buy, why to buy, when to bye, how much to bye and in which manner to bye. The participants in the buying decisions before buying, during the purchase and afterwards can be categorized as initiator, influencer, decider, buyer and user (Werth, 2007).

The American Author of Marketing Management and the father of modern marketing, Philip Kotler (the American author on Marketing) defined consumer behavior as the behavior involving social, psychological and physical behaviors that are taken prior to evaluating to purchase and then subsequently consume a product. Market Researchers had identified that, consumers/customers do not always act or react, as marketing theories suggest. Consumer within the scope of any country is vast and accounts for a millions of customers who purchase goods and services for millions of dollars in a continuous effort (Darley, 2010). The scope of this report analyses consumer decision making process of consumer related to Samsung mobile phones by reviewing and analysis of relevant literature sources along with concepts.

The knowledge regarding the consumer behavior which helps market-researchers realize ways in  consumers perceives, feels and chose amongst different options such as goods/ products, brands and the preferences and ways in which consumers are influenced by their surroundings or the reference groups, family, ambiance and salespersons and so on (Quester, 2007).  The consumer’s purchasing behavior is influenced by personal, social, cultural and  and mental factors. Most of these factors are unmanageable and beyond the reach of market-researchers it can be attributed to the complex behavior of the consumers..

There are two factors which generally influence the consumers for decision making—(1)Risk aversion and (2 )innovativeness (Verhagen, 2010).

Risk aversion is a measure of how much consumers need to be convinced and sure of what they are buying according to Donthu and Gilliland (1996). Highly risks do not favor the consumers ‘requirements. The second variable constitutes  innovativeness which in turn comprises of  global measure that can integrate degrees to which the consumers want to take chances and experiment with new ways and means of doing things. Morrison and Roberts (1998) identified that, consumer’s perception on service or product and a channel is very powerful in analyzing whether they will regard as using that channel for a specific service The perceived idea was integral to  consumer’s preferences in order to determine distribution method or service (Wang, 2009). According to Rossiter and Prey (1987), the brand awareness is the initial approach in determining of a consumer purchase decision. As brand attitude cannot be developed unless brand awareness regarding a particular brand is made. According to memory theory, brand awareness is positioned as the initial stage such that constructing the pillars of associations which are emotionally present to the brand in memory according to Stokes (1985). Our research study deals with Consumer Decision and purchasing behavior regarding buying of Samsung Galaxy Feel mobile phone (Zinkan, 2012). 

Factors Influencing Consumer Decision Making

It was founded in 1969 as Samsung Electric Industries, headquartered in Suwon, in South Korea. It launched its first Android smart-phone in 2009, and also launched  the first Android tablet in 2010 (Szmigin, 2009). The company is among the biggest players in the smart-phone market in the world. It has recently developed smart-phones using Tizen Operating System, as an alternative to its Android-based smart-phones. Samsung’s latest mobile launch is named as ‘Galaxy Feel’. This was launched in May 2017. The phone has a 4.7-inch touch-screen display with a resolution of 720 pixels by 1280 pixels. Its look is also quite trendy (Solomon M. R.-B., 2012). 

The study involved two respondents of whom one is a female student of architecture college of age 20 (respondent A) and another is a man of 45 years (responder B) who is employed in an Engineering firm. Both are from U.S.A (Solomon M. , 2014).

A questionnaire on various factors were placed before them in an interview session. The responses of each question was quantified by Likert scale and percentage of the scores were considered as results (Mihart, 2012).

Respondent ‘A’

Serial No.	Factors which influenced Buyer’s Decision	Percentage     %
1.	Quality	51
2.	Impact of packaging	67
3.	Brand Name	84
4.	Get up	76
5.	Promotional activities	50
6.	Influence by others	87
7.	Advertisement	55
8.	Price	42
9.	Trend	81
10.	New technology (Tizen O.S.)other than Android	87

Serial No.	Factors which influenced Buyer’s Decision	Percentage     %
1.	Quality	75
2.	Impact of packaging	46
3.	Brand Name	71
4.	Get up	45
5.	Promotional activities	35
6.	Influence by others	43
7.	Advertisement	41
8.	Price	78
9.	Trend	56
10.	New technology (Tizen O.S.)other than Android	62

Now from the two tables it is clear that the female young student made her purchasing decision  mostly on the basis of Packaging, Brand name, Influence by others, Trend and New Technology, whereas the middle aged serviceman mostly focused on Quality, Brand name, Price and New technology (Walsh, 2010).  

Conclusion

Products are usually advertised with brand names. An advertisement with a brand name, it rebuilds an image of the product in the  minds of the consumer.. The companies are supposed to maintain, improve the brand quality so that the reliance  of the consumers is maintained and not reduced, otherwise there will be a drop in the market share. The theory of Dissonance shows  that if a person, given a choice between two equally sought-after products, selects one and rejects the other, the person experiences discord. Such discord will direct the person to appraise the selected  product more positively and the rejected product less favorably., once arisen, persists and how it may be avoided.

The purchase decision and behavior of the consumers vary from person to person. For young buyers  price, quality etc are not very important as in the case of matured buyers whereas Quality, technology, Price etc are much more important to matured buyers.  Consumer behavior cannot be  accurately predicted . To some extent it can be  predicted by the help of research procedure. Beginning  and finishing of the research survey provides insight regarding a particular idea that ‘consumer is the king’. Hence organizations focus in analyzing the requirements of the people thoroughly to satisfy and retaining them. This study revealed that impact factors of consumers’ buying can be attributed to the Brand name, quality, Promotional activities of the product. Manufactures make use of advertising campaigns such that promotion can lead to  higher consumption of mobile phones. Creating awareness regarding particular product and its features is a part of social responsibility of the company. There are several important factors considered by the consumer for decision making. Brand image, advertising, and offer play an important role in purchasing. In most of the cases based on the offer the consumer makes comparison with competitors’ product and select the one that is suited to him. Product attribute  analysis by the consumer is undertaken for detailed analysis and for deciding a brand for final purchase. Switching from a product to other company’s product is primarily based on advertisement, brand name, packaging availability, and price rise and so on. Thus, companies analyze all these factors and find out the best suitable tools for promoting their cell phones. 

Reference Lists

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Mihart, C. 2012. Impact of integrated marketing communication on consumer behaviour: effects on consumer decision–making process. . International Journal of Marketing Studies, 121.

Quester, P. N. 2007. Consumer behaviour: Implications for marketing strategy. McGraw-Hill.

Solomon, M. 2014. Consumer behavior: Buying, having, and being (Vol. 10). Engelwood Cliffs. NJ: Prentice Hall.

Solomon, M. R.-B. 2012. Consumer behaviour. Pearson Higher Education AU.

Szmigin, I. C. 2009. The conscious consumer: taking a flexible approach to ethical behaviour. . International Journal of Consumer Studies, 224-231.

Tom, G. N. 2007. Mere exposure and the endowment effect on consumer decision making. . The Journal of psychology, 117-125.

Verhagen, T. B. 2010. The effect of product type on consumer preferences for website content elements: An empirical study. Journal of Computer?Mediated Communication, 139-170.

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Wang, W. &. 2009. Interactive decision aids for consumer decision making in e-commerce: The influence of perceived strategy restrictiveness. . MIS quarterly, 293-320.

Werth, L. a. 2007. How regulatory focus influences consumer behavior. European Journal of Social Psychology, 33-51.

Zinkan, G. e. 2012. Advertising research: The internet, consumer behavior, and strategy. . Marketing Classics Press.