Understanding Chinese consumers' choice of smartphone brands: an exploratory study

China has become the world’s largest consumer market for smartphones, therefore understanding Chinese consumers (CC)’ decision making in the smartphone market is of crucial importance to smartphone brands. Existing... [ view full abstract ]

China has become the world’s largest consumer market for smartphones, therefore understanding Chinese consumers (CC)’ decision making in the smartphone market is of crucial importance to smartphone brands. Existing theories can help to explain why customers choose new technologies over existing ones, but are woefully inadequate when it comes to examining why consumers choose a specific high-technology brand over others available in the market. The aim of the present study, therefore, is to address this gap by developing a new conceptual framework which will be effective in explaining the factors that directly influence consumer choice of smartphone brands. Face-to-face interviews have been carried with young, well-educated, affluent CC in order to investigate the factors that influence their decision to choose particular smartphone brands. The findings highlight a range of factors that are considered by almost all respondents. In general, for CC, the technical properties of the phone are overshadowed by various socio-cultural and marketing factors which represent primary influences on consumer decisions. The study shows that high-technology products conspicuously consumed (i.e. smartphones), are considered as a status symbol and therefore CC make brand decisions based on appearance, style, brand loyalty and popularity rather than quality, technological superiority or performance.