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DYNAMICS OF SMARTPHONE PREFERENCES IN COLLEGE STUDENTS OF INDORE,MP DURING COVID19 Vinayak Bansal
Management Student, Daly College of Business Management, Indore, M.P Dr. Neetika Shrivastava
Assistant Professor, Daly College of Business Management, Indore, M.P.
Abstract - In today’s internet era, smartphones have seen sales growth at unprecedented rates. India being the country with the highest growth rate for smartphone adoption, it is necessary to understand what preferences of a smartphone drives this sale. Smartphones today cannot be called anything less than an infrastructure. With their increasing usage on a daily basis, it is a tool used more by population every day than transportation or building infrastructure which are the first things that come to mind when someone talks about infrastructure. This study focused on the smartphone preferences of the young age group between 18-22 years. It had focus on the brand perspective, price preferences, and what features does young generation looks for when purchasing a tool with utility beyond words.
Research utilised a sample population of 111 college-going students from different fields to understand their usage and purchasing patterns of a smartphone.
Keywords: Smartphone, features, customer preferences.
1. INTRODUCTION
The mobile phone industry in India has widely been dominated by international players only. While domestic players like Micromax, Lava, Spice were thrown out of the market long back, they still struggle to come back and give competition to these foreign giants. The mobile phone market in India was widely disturbed in 2016-17 with the coming of Jio and access to cheap and fast internet on mobile handsets. This allowed every average Indian earner to afford a mobile phone with internet. With access to free services like WhatsApp, Facebook, Google, YouTube among others, it is not a matter of surprise to see a growing year-on-year (YoY) growth in the mobile phone industry even after the pandemic.
The main foreign players are having their roots in China and are manufacturing almost all of their sales in India itself. Players like Xiaomi and Oppo are also manufacturing up to 99% of their sales in India with more than 70% of the value of the handset sourced from local suppliers only. This is helping the economy in many ways but is also allowing these giants to take a lot of money back to their home country. While Xiaomi claims that more than 95% of their workforce of over 50,000 people is women in their 4 factories across the country, the employment generated by these companies cannot be ignored either.
What makes it critical to analyse the current mobile handset industry is its sheer importance and the effect it is creating in everyone’s life. There’s also a bit to worry since mobile phone holds the most crucial data of our everyday lives and that data is owned by companies with their root in countries like China. What also is important is to learn what the new generation wants in their new mobiles. What brands are they liking and what brands didn’t satisfy their expectations. A critical analysis is crucial at this stage where Digital Revolution is on set in a country like India.
2. LITERATURE REVIEW
A report by Pacific Business Review in November 2018 stated how the introduction of Reliance’s Jio helped to create what can be called a boom in the Smartphone Industry of India. Jio, with its very competitive strategies, was able to create demand for the internet in a manner that was never predicted by anyone. There was pressure on other Telecom players to switch to Jio’s pricing to stay competitive at a stage where they were charging up to 50 times the price Jio offered. This created a lot of demand for 4G handsets in the Indian market. This allowed Chinese players like Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo which already had developed 4G handsets for their home market to quickly offer mass production for an unexpected rise in demand for 4G phones in India which helped them capture most of the market in no time.
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Supporting this report, the Compliance Engineering Journal, in its 2019 report explained how many telecom companies had to collaborate with other companies in order to reduce costs and survive in the market. Even very popular players like DoCoMo had to close their operations due to the losses incurred after the introduction of Jio. Biggest companies like Vodafone and !dea had to shake hands in order to survive and are still not able to make profits or add subscribers to their network. This led to the very competitive pricing of internet services provided by these operators which lead to a huge surge in demand for internet-enabled devices. It is important to note that this sudden demand hype was not predicted by any of the domestic smartphone makers like Micromax, Spice, Lava, etc which didn’t allow them time to update their line up and put it to mass production which leads to Chinese supremacy over the Indian smartphone market.Another report by Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER) published in October 2019 depicted how there’s a cutthroat competition going on in the Indian Smartphone Market. With ever-evolving customer preferences and demand for new features and better output, and cheaper phones, brands are working on a profit margin as low as 5% to survive in this market. This has led small players especially the domestic ones to leave this race in the middle due to incapability of mass production or cheaper alternatives to compete with Chinese giants. What was surprising was the extent to which Indians accepted newer brands without any history of operations in the country to dominate the market and beat brands like Samsung and Nokia which holds the trust of their years of service. Brands just as old as 4-5 years like Xiaomi and Realme were able to take the top 2 spots by the year 2019 in smartphone sales in India.
3. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY 3.1 Rationale of the Study
The research will also throw light on the telecom brands that the users prefer and which among them is the most popular. Since the Indian telecom industry has reduced to only 3 major private brands and just one nationalized brand due to huge costs and losses involved, it will help us understand how the top 2 private brands cover more than 80% of the market share. Mobile phones have nowadays become almost a substitute to personal computers with almost every function available on them which is available on a laptop/desktop. It is vital to understand what are the key factors the youth is noticing while taking a smartphone purchase decision. Whether it is the camera, screen, connectivity, or battery, all the decisive factors will be uncovered in the research.
3.2 Objectives
The main focus of the study was to understand how deep is the Indian smartphone market and its customer’s preferences. Study was conducted to understand Brand Preference among the youth and what are the requirements they seek to fulfil from their phones. The study also aimed at understanding the spending pattern of students on smart phones as it affects pricing decisions for smartphone companies. Another objective was to get information regarding factors affecting updating and replacement decisions of Smartphones that influence students.
3.3 Research Design
To conduct extensive research, a survey was conducted of over 100 college students of Indore, Madhya Pradesh, aging from 18-22 to understand their smartphone preferences, which telecom operator they use, if they would like to change their smartphone brand in their next purchase, and various demographics like their preferred price range, features, brands, etc.
This survey was done over Google forms and was answered by 111 people in a period of 3 days. While this allowed us to gather the demographic data of smartphone brands and their preference in a sample of Indian youth, it is important to know that due to the pandemic, usage of the smartphone has gone up due to an excessive requirement of smart devices for meetings and classes over the internet which may have an effect on the results of this survey.
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The students were asked to answer 28 questions which included their smartphone brand, telecom brand, usage hours, preferred features among other questions. All the questions were compulsory to answer and were objective-based only. The questionnaire also inquired about their purchase patterns like offline or online, their usage pattern and typical hours during a day, color and size preferences among others. The questionnaire also asked crucial preferences surrounding a smartphone such as extra features, telecom brand, country of manufacture, amount of storage to clearly investigate what goes into taking a smartphone purchasing decision by today’s young generation.4. ANALYSIS & DISCUSSIONS
The analysis of the survey uses various tools of statistical data like averages and means to study the data and also used various depiction tools such as pie charts and bar graphs to represent distribution and percentages of various demographics in an easy-to-understand and use manner.
4.1 Sample Demographics:
The responses recorder had over 93% of students in the age group of 18-22 while most of them being under 20. This enabled the research to be valid and futuristic for years to come as GenZ continues to grow. Keeping the age group limited has enabled the research on the target group which makes the most smartphone decisions. This age group takes decisions even for the elderly people due to their interest and understanding capabilities about the technicalities in a smartphone.
Out of all the responses recorded, both the genders had a fair share of responses which is close to 50-50. This demographic can even help the marketers to understand which gender looks into what features first and if there’s a gender inclination towards a certain brand or
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features if so. This can lead to targeted marketing efforts and also enable designing of products which will fit the requirements of a gender specifically.Since the study was targeted at the younger age group, more than 85% of the respondents were in their undergraduate degree at the time of the survey. Taking undergraduate students as a main focus of study will also help the brands to identify core features that students require on a daily basis to fulfill their needs. Since most of India’s population lives in the younger age group and is still studying, it will help them to understand if adding student specific features can help them to increase the demand among students.
4.2 Smartphone Demographics of Respondents
While understanding what are the demographics of the targeted sample are, it is equally important to understand various demographics of a smartphone are, of the sample to understand the kind of smartphone the youth like before analysing it with respect to brands and features.
The most evenly distributed chart of the research is based out of the price points at which the youth is happy to purchase a smartphone. As shown, there’s no clear majority with any price bracket and is quite evenly contributed by each range in the scale. While Rs. 30-40K leads the chart with almost 19% responses, it is clear that value-for-money smartphones should be the key for the brands to look next.
It is important to note that even expensive ranges like Rs. 80K+ had a fair share in the chart with up to 12% of the 111 people wanting to spend on a smartphone which shows the trend of luxury smartphones amongst the youth. This can even grow further if luxury smartphone makers like Apple and Samsung can focus on more student inclined phones and their features. However, one can not ignore the fact that none of the 111 respondents chose Rs. 0-10K bracket for their next smartphone purchase which indicates an inclination of the youth to spend at least 10K or more while purchasing a smartphone.
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It is of vital importance to understand the purchase patterns of the current generation with respect to their most essential tool today that is a smartphone. The results of the research showed that more than 40% of the respondents have bought the phone not earlier than a year of this research being conducted. This certainly points to a major buying pattern which probably means that this generation is inclined towards updating their phones frequently and not use them longer than 1-1.5 years. To scrutinize this pattern more extensively, another question was asked as followed.During the research, although 40% of respondents did not buy a phone earlier than 1.5 years before the date of the survey, their usage for each smartphone is inclined towards the 2-year mark. Almost 50% of the respondents were ready to use their phone for 2-2.5 years of their purchase date which shows that although they do not prefer cheap phones below the Rs. 10K price point, they tend to use the slightly expensive phones over the years which makes their overall cost of ownership per year even lower than the cheaper options available in the market. To use the smartphone for over 2 years, it is necessary that a user is satisfied with its performance and usability. Unless it solves most of the daily uses a customer expects from his/her smartphone, satisfaction cannot be achieved. A smartphone should provide its intended utility to the end-user in terms of software, hardware, and after- sales service.
To study if the users are satisfied or not with their smartphone brands, a question was included in the survey to ask the same. Here are the results.
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100 out of 111 people answered that they are satisfied with their current smartphone brand. This shows that most of the brands available in the market are able to satisfy the customer segments they are targeting. This also can suggest that to survive the competition, brands need to continuously upgrade their quality standards to ensure customer satisfaction which was not done by Indian domestic brands like Micromax, Lava, etc. Going short on quality on either of the aspects of a phone whether hardware or software needs to be harmonized to create an experience instead of just a product.However, continuing the research gave slightly contradictory results as expected after looking at the above pie chart. While every 9 out of 10 people were satisfied with their current smartphone brand, it was not enough to ensure that they will stick to the same brand in their next purchase. To know more about this a question was added to ask if the respondent would like to change the smartphone brand in their next purchase.
According to the results, while 90% of the people were satisfied with the current smartphone brand, there was a tendency to still change that brand in the future purchase.
More than half of the sample population responded that they will either definitely change the brand or are most likely to. Only 46.8% of the respondents were not thinking to do the same. This raises serious questions on brand loyalty in the smartphone market. This can also be a potential reason as to why domestic Indian brands were not able to survive in the market due to poor brand loyalty as compared to other industries. The young generation has to be given some strong reasons by the brands to retain them for the next purchase which needs aggressive marketing strategies and a great overall experience while using a device that is used by the user every single day.
To understand this buying behaviour, it was necessary to understand when the respondents wanted to purchase their next smartphone.
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While it was a close match, ~50% population wanted to buy it in the 2021-22 period only.While pandemic has made the economy fall down, the mobile phone market seems unaffected.
4.3 Smartphone Preferences of the Respondents
To study smartphone preferences, it is necessary for brands to know the features and preferences of today’s generation which is the key decision-maker of every household in today’s time. While elderly people are dependent on this generation to take the smartphone decision, it is vital for marketers to impress them rather than the former. To understand and analyse various features and preferences of the sample population, many objective-type questions were asked to understand their likes and dislikes. While some respondents proved to be brand conscious, it enabled a premium brand like Apple takes a considerable amount of market share in the new generation.
4.3.1 Smartphone Brand Preferences of the respondents
During the initial smartphone demographic analysis, the most popular price range was Rs.
30-40K. This certainly corresponds to the brand preferences shown by the respondents as over 40% of them prefer premium a brand like Apple. However, a huge contrast is highlighted in the pie chart when the second most popular brand comes out to be Xiaomi which is just opposite of what can be called a luxury brand right now in India.
Xiaomi has been the No.1 smartphone brand in terms of sales in India since mid- 2017 which shows that budget range smartphones are easily more preferred in a country like India but this is not true for the younger generation. They are preferring luxury over costs and certainly pointing that quality is the number one priority for them. However looking at the overall picture, it is certain that premium brands attract this generation more than comparatively inexpensive brands like Xiaomi or Realme. This is shown by more than 65% of respondents preferring brands like Apple, OnePlus, and Samsung.
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Continuing this trend is what the next question of the research shows. The respondents were asked about their next purchase also with current preferences. The trend to own luxury and expensive phones continue to show for future purchases too.The inclination towards brands like Apple and One Plus shows that irrespective of the price, quality, and experience is what the next generation is looking for in their next purchase.
Combining the top 3 brands according to this result, Apple, One Plus, and Samsung are what more than 90% of the respondents want to buy. More than half of them want only one brand, the epitome of luxury, the iPhone.
In order to have an insight about what are the quality parameters these respondents check compulsorily before buying a phone and what makes the top 3 most admired brands in the next smartphone purchase, worth their position, the survey asked about all the features that the respondents look at while purchasing the phone.
4.3.2 Smartphone Features preferred by the respondents
Apple, One Plus, and Samsung, the next go-to brands of more than 90% of the young generation show that they excel because of three major factors which are looked at by more than 75% of the population namely camera (close to 90%), screen quality and the processor.
While other cheaper brands may be providing incomparable value for money, they are lacking in the 3 departments highlighted by the respondents. Other factors included various aspects of a smartphone like the internal specifications, battery capacity, faster charging, after-sales support, and durability which affected the decisions of many respondents.
A shocking figure that popped up during the analysis of this question is that most of the cheaper brands like Xiaomi, Oppo, and Vivo are concentrating more on the looks of the phone to make it attractive to potential buyers however the survey showed that less than 1% of the respondents were interested in looks of the phone. What mattered the most was the three-factor combo among many others to take a purchase decision.
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Diving deep into why looks were not important to almost every one of the sample population, most of the respondents answered that they do use a back cover to protect the phone which anyway hides its looks which makes it less important.According to the few users who didn’t bother to use a back cover were not interested in looks either due to the crucial factors which affected the purchase decision instead of looks.
This can be the reason why most of the inexpensive brands are not on the go-to list of the respondents as they are focusing on making the phone look better instead of performing better which not even on the list of almost every young chap.
Since the brands now realize that looks are the least bothering feature of the users, it was important to understand why performance and camera quality were the top concerns for more than 75% of the users. To understand this better, respondents were asked to mention all the functions they use their smartphones for.
4.3.3 Smartphone Functions preferred by the respondents
Social media usage, calling, and photography are what is done by a major chunk of respondents which demands good performance and cameras and thus the requirements.
While many users also use it for heavier tasks like gaming and office work, it generates a need to have a phone with a good processor, and thus it was a crucial requirement alongside camera quality. This analysis can help brands to improve on the features and select a combination of hardware to fulfil most or even all of the needs mentioned by the respondents through the survey.
It is vital to understand that much of the usage mentioned in the graphs can be a result of the pandemic too. Functions like online classes and binge-watching were mostly generated due to restrictions of going out and staying at home, thus requiring students to attend classes online. This has also led to increased social media usage and a surge in viewership of OTT platforms which was the favourite pass time of youngsters during the lockdown.
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Since camera quality, topped the list of preferred features by the sample population, understanding the kind of camera requirement is crucial for brands to make the most important requirement even better to generate sales and attract the decision-makers. To understand the camera configuration expected by the respondents a question was included.While more than a third of respondents were satisfied with dual cameras, more than two- third were happy with up to triple cameras. This also hints at the number games played by the less expensive brands to attract naive customers. These brands tend to put more number of cameras in the phone to increase the numbers and attract customers, however, this leads to increased cost. To reduce it, they tend to put cheap camera sensors instead of good ones which fails to fulfil the most important requirement of the customer, the camera quality.
This is what differentiates the top brands from the budget ones. They put less number of cameras but with excellent sensors and thus the image quality instead of putting more cheap sensors to attract customers with numbers and defying their most important need and thus failing to retain them for the next purchase.
A smartphone is not just made up of hardware components and the software experience, it’s a combination of space, feel, looks, in-hand feel, utility, and an experience.
To create this magic many other small but very essential aspects are needed to be taken care of. These include but are not limited to the size of the phone, color preferences, storage available, dual sim functionality. To understand all these aspects from the respondent’s perspective, quick objective questions were asked to get an overview of the preferences.
64 and 128 GBs of storage has been satisfactory for almost 70% of the respondents which makes it easy for companies to go for these two options. They can also provide MicroSD slots for the small portion of respondents who require more than 128 GB of storage.
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On asking for dual sim functionality, more than three-quarters of respondents wanted at least 2 sims to operate on one phone. This should also be a simple pick for the brands instead of providing single sim options. Preferences with a clear majority should be on the prime radar of all the brands to increase customer engagement and retention.Talking about physical appearance, size is an important issue for every object. When asked about phones, more the two-third wanted a medium-sized phone which is neither too big to hold in hands nor too small to use. This is followed by large phones to have a better viewing experience, concluded by small phones with less than 10% acceptance.
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Another important aspect of physical appearance is color, which is dominated by black at least in the younger generation of users. This is followed by white which is only 9%preferred and followed by other colors with negligible preference. To attract most youth, black should be an easy pick for brands when it comes to color choices or schemes.
4.3.4 Smartphone usage pattern of the respondents
For brands to have the best market share and retains their young customers, it is important for them to understand how much is an average user using his smartphone, which operator is being preferred, how many applications and software are being installed to better optimize the software part of the phone to enhance the experience.
While using any telecom is the sole discretion of the end-user, it is important to understand the major carriers in the market. While this can be counted as an unimportant aspect, the network can be a huge issue for customer dissatisfaction. If the brands are clear about the major carriers that end-users are using, it will help them integrate those carrier’s antenna bands specifically on those mobiles which can have a huge impact on the cellular performance of the smartphone which holds crucial importance in today’s internet era.
Thus understanding carrier preference becomes more important than brands think of it.
A smartphone is a junction of many applications which help the user to complete daily tasks with ease, whether it is messaging, communicating, shopping, playing, or tracking, applications provide unmatched utility to the end-user of the smartphone. Brands need to understand the average number of applications installed by users to optimize their hardware and software to handle those amounts of applications. This will help them to be lag and stutter-free. As per the analysis, most users use 20 or more applications in their smartphones which require huge processing power and RAM. Brands should make sure that these are available to enable user satisfaction
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Last but not the least, knowing the amount of time a smartphone is being used will help the brands to give the appropriate capacity of batter to last as per the requirements. While almost a third of users agreed that they use smartphones for more than 3 hours per day, it clearly shows the huge demand for good battery capacity which can last long enough for the usage patterns. Excluding this crucial factor can cause unnecessary and avoidable customer satisfaction.5. LIMITATIONS & FUTURE RECOMMENDATIONS
The study was focused on a select target group of smartphone users and does not take into account the large population outside the 18-22 years age group which can also affect the decisions of the smartphone brands. The research also takes into account a fairly small sample size of only 111 respondents which may not represent the actual or the overall trends of the smartphone preferences in the age group and maybe confined to location barriers too as all the respondents were residents of Indore, the survey can be implemented on larger sample to generate more accurate results. To have better and much-concentrated results of the smartphone market, this research can be continued to check the preferences and demands of other age groups as well. Not only this, the research can be further extended to have an overview of how different price range of customers changes their demands. This can help to take a differentiated approach for budget and premium brands to focus on their price-to-performance ratio. This research can also be branched according to specific brand perspectives for each brand to simplify every brand’s customer perspective.
6. CONCLUSION
Counting on various parameters of brand value, specifications, customer retainment, and the overall experience of a smartphone, it can be easily understood that satisfying a young tech-savvy generation of India is not easy for the brands. While some people want performance over looks, some look for a premium feel and experience to take a smartphone decision. Having such diluted and varied market preferences, creating a perfect smartphone seems impossible. The reason for the same is the usage patterns that have emerged after many trends like the incoming of cheap internet services, the pandemic, or online education, these instances have evolved the usage of mobile in unpredicted ways over the last 4 years or so.
To conclude, smartphones today cannot be called anything less than an infrastructure facility in today’s internet era. Infrastructure today is not only transportation/building/telecom facilities but also consists of a major tool called mobile that has more users than these infrastructures mentioned above. Brands need to focus on providing the best possible product in every price range in terms of quality rather than advertising something which is good to read on paper but not to use in real life. Also, instead of having a long spec-sheet with a list of features, brands are now expected to
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enhance the experience of which specification is just a part. This experience can include the software performance, after-sales service, look and feel, and durability over the years.REFERENCES
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