I would like to thank my family members, my mother, father and my younger sister for their support in every moment of my life until I completed this research for my master's degree. Thailand's electronics industry is well known as a manufacturing hub in the global value chain. This research examines the factors influencing consumer behavior towards a particular Thai electronic product, light bulbs.
The research topic is “what is the consumer behavior towards the Thai electronics companies' own brands, and what factors make Thai consumers use or not use these Thai products.” Marketing strategy, communications and channels are topics we will study together, focusing on consumer behavior in the Thai home electronics market, especially the light bulb market. Traditionally, Thailand's electronics industry has been part of the global supply chain. They form the manufacturing base of the global electronics companies due to cheap labor and the benefit of the government's foreign direct investment (FDI) policies.
Value addition in this research is a process in which the electronic firms integrate their products or electronic components together and create the new electronic equipment for home or office use. Consumer behavior of Thailand's market is really interesting to examine from the situation above, to examine factors and opportunities for Thai firms to add value to their product and create their own brand. This theory will be used to set the proposal for studying the consumer behavior towards Thailand electronic components in this research paper.
Understanding Thailand's consumer behavior will lead to the integration of manufacturing based on sustainably adding value to Thai products, which will benefit the country's GDP as electronics are the foundation for almost every other industry.
LITERATURE REVIEW
- Thailand Electronics Industry
- Consumer Behavior
- Marketing Strategy of Electronics Firms
- Consumer Behavior and Culture Factors
Researchers claimed that the electronics industry is driven by components in the Knowledge Management framework, namely knowledge acquisition, knowledge creation, knowledge storage, knowledge sharing, knowledge reuse, knowledge codification, knowledge application, knowledge synthesis and knowledge evaluation. Value-added products have competitive quality, but may not have sufficient consumer demand to remain competitive in the long term, as an example from Distar and Thanin Radio illustrates. Raju (1995) examined consumer behavior in emerging markets, including Thailand, using the A-B-C-D paradigm, which is explained in the figure below.
From this research, we can see the decision-making process and factors from the explanation through the A-B-C-D paradigm in the emerging markets including Thailand, which is my interest area of study, and Eastern Europe. The percentage of information collected by Thais is higher than that in developed countries. The social structure factor could be one of the factors that influence the consumer behavior of local electronics brands in Thailand, which I will study.
At the same time, they need to differentiate themselves from the competition in the market, which included differentiation through innovation and cost leadership, an approach as their marketing strategy. According to Suksrivirai (2012), customers who buy electronic products have a lot of experience in the market: the average number is about 7 years. The branding strategy used by companies needs to be repeated often to stay in the minds of customers, as customers tend to buy a brand they are familiar with.
This topic will benefit my research because it is in the same study area, namely Thailand, while my research will focus on brand perception, which will be related to factors that influence the decision to purchase an electronic to purchase product. A long-standing brand usually has more advantage in the electronics industry in Thailand, especially when it comes to value-added products. Socio-demographic and physiological factors of countries tend to influence consumption behavior in the country.
Therefore, Hofstede's five dimensions of national culture, namely power distance, insecure avoidance, time orientation, masculinity and individualism, will be used to explain the difference in culture that motivates purchasing and consumption behavior in the country. Furthermore, with high uncertainty avoidance, customers tend to collect more data about the product they want to purchase. This is why there is limited competition among brands in the market and only the good brand can stay in the business in the long run.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
Chapter Overview
Sample Population
Online questionnaire questions
- Qualification 1. Strongly agree
- Demographic Questions
- Pricing Questions
- Quality questions
- Branding questions
- Social questions
- Intention to buy question
The shape of the bulb and its color are more important to me than the price. The shape of the bulb and its color are more important to me than the quality. The shape of the bulb and its color are more important to me than the brand.
I usually rely on the salesperson at the store to help me select the right light bulb. I will only buy Thai brand lamps if there is reliable evidence that they are as good as an international brand. I only buy Thai brand light bulbs if they are sold at a lower price than international brands.
I am willing to buy Thai brand light bulbs at a higher price than international brands because I want to help develop the country and support local industry.
RESEARCH FINDINGS
Demographic Result
From the above evidence, we can conclude that about 70 percent of the 67 respondents have an education higher than a bachelor's degree and the frequency of buying a light bulb at least once a year, which is often silent, since one quality light bulb has a lifespan of more than 2 years.
Main Finding
From the table, the highest mean value is "I mainly buy a light bulb because it has high quality." This is in that part of the quality issue. Followed by branding issues, we can conclude that consumer behavior of customers buying a light bulb is influenced by quality factors and branding factor. For quality factor, it is difficult to compare whether one bulb is better than another, but we can conclude from the result that if brands can make customers believe that their product has high quality, they can influence consumer behavior.
In addition to the brand and the social factor, there is also a pricing factor that has a higher mean value than the value of “2”.
Factors affecting the decision to buy a light bulb
- Branding Factors
- Pricing factors
The red color represents the pricing factor, which consists of discounts and promotions, lower prices and higher prices. The blue color represents the brand factor, which consists of buying the same brand and buying Philips and Panasonic products. The last green color represents the function of the bulb, which consisted of preferring to buy a functional bulb with other factors.
From proposition I suspect that there are many variables, together with the social factor will be one of the most important factors influencing consumer behavior when purchasing a light bulb. This shows that brand, which can be influenced by social factors and price factors, are two factors that play an important role for customers to buy a light bulb. Brand factors are one of an important factor that influenced consumer behavior in purchasing one light bulb.
Social factors play an important role when it comes to their brand familiarity and salesperson advice, as shown in Figure 7. Almost 85% of respondents buy Philip's and Panasonic lamps, which are their familiar brands, and more than 50% buy the same brand light bulbs. In addition, 55 percent of respondents agree that their decision to buy a light bulb was influenced by salespeople.
This may indicate that in general, branding and social factors play an important role in the purchase of this product when it comes to choosing a brand in the same product function and style. According to my proposal and expectation, more than one factor influences the decision to buy a lamp along with the social factor. The price factor plays an important role in buying a lamp, especially when customers can compare the price or come across a promotional price.
It can be classified as an advantage for brand to shift the customer's decision to buy from a competitor brand, with the same level of quality and function. More than 70% of the respondents are willing to consider for a light bulb with a cheaper or competitive price. According to the proposal, this is another factor that influenced consumer behavior when purchasing a light bulb.
CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Conclusions
Opportunities for Thais’ firm
First option: Thai companies, such as L&E, can use social and branding factors to convince customers that their product has the same quality as international companies. Word of mouth and viral marketing could be one of the choices for Thai companies as it plays with social factor which is quite important in the local market to communicate to Thai consumers. Second option, Thai company can use low price as their pricing strategy and better position their product to compete with international brand products.
The percentage may not seem as promising as the first option, but it is an opportunity to incorporate this information into the overall marketing plan for Thai light bulb brands.
Recommendations for Future Research
Consumer behavior in global markets: the ABCD paradigm and its application to Eastern Europe and the Third World.
APPENDICES
Appendix A: Demographic Questions
How often do you buy household electronic products such as light bulbs and batteries.
