Business Research Methods

MOBILE PHONE BUYING REPORT

Submitted to: Prof. V. Shrivastava

Submitted by:
Ajay Tomar (2012026) Anshuman Singh (2012054)
PGDM 1ST year Section- A

Executive Summary:
India is the worlds 12th largest consumer market. It is projected that by 2025, it will be ahead of Germany and will become the fifth largest economy of the world. There is an explosive growth in almost all the areas of consumer goods and services. Communication that accounts for 2% of consumers spending today will be one of the fastest expanding categories with growth of about 13%. Consumers around the world are different in various factors such as age, income, education level and preferences which may affect the way they avail of goods and services. This behavior then impacts how products and services are presented to the different consumer markets. There are many components which influence consumer behavior namely; cultural, social, personal, and psychological. The world of communications has undergone not just one, but two comparable paradigm shifts since that time. The first being the invention and widespread popularity of the traditional telephone and the other is the invention and adoption of the cell phone. Mobile phones have become to enable a purposeful and fulfilling life.

Problem Statement:
The project had been undertaken with an objective to understand the customer behaviour in the MOBILE PHONE product category. The need is to identifying the determinant purchase factors, the customer segments and the sources of information they rely on. The existing positioning of prominent brands and the perceptions among different segments were also covered under the study. The brand loyalty and switching were also studied. The brand personality was also studied as a part of the project.

Research Objective:
The objective of this research is to identify the factors that influence a person into making a decision to buy a certain brand of mobile phone. This research intends to find out the relationship between environmental factors with buyers decision making process. This study also intends to compare the two elements in environmental factors in terms influencing buying decisions to find out which stimuli is the main stimuli that mostly influence consumers mobile phone buying decisions. As mentioned in the Literature Review, according to industry analysts, this category has grown only on promotions and for now, except for promotions, nothing seems to be working. Therefore, ideally, this research should be able to bring to the fore, certain other factors that could lead to a growth of this segment.

Literature Review:
The mobile handset has shifted from being a technological object to a key social object as communication with others is the main purpose for mobile handset purchasing. However, facilitating family or friend coordination and intensifying social interaction are the crucial factors for using a mobile handset. According to Castells et al., (2007, p.85), obtaining a mobile handset is a milestone that indicates success, not only financially but also culturally in term of the integration within the society. There are different factors which affect the customer to switch from loyalty to switching intentions such as price, quality, brand, style functions etc. But, the rating is the most important factors which affects the customers to switch to another provider. McGraw-Hill (2005) define consumer buying behavior as the behavior in the quest to satisfy needs which products and services were acquired to satisfy these personal consumption needs.

Importance/ Benefits of the Study:

With the help of this study, we intend to figure out, the relationship between environmental factors and consumers buying behavior. Further, this study would also provide information of which stimuli works best in influencing consumers buying decision towards mobile phone product. We want to find, whether it's just the brand name which matters, or is it the functional quality of the mobile which the actual consumer likes.

Research Design:
Data Collection:
Primary data was collected through Questionnaire 1. Please specify your gender?
Male Female

2. Which category below includes your age?

17 or younger 18-20 21-25 26-30 31-35 35-40 40 or older

3. Which of the following best describes your current occupation?

Student Service Business

4. Rate the purpose you use your cell phone?

1 Calling Messaging Internet Others 2 3 4

5. How much you feel is comfortable to spend on a cell phone?

< Rs. 5000 Rs.5000- Rs 10000 Rs. 10001 - Rs. 15000 Rs. 15001 - Rs. 20000

Rs. 20001 - Rs 25000

Rs 25001 - Rs. 30000

> Rs. 30000

6. Rank the brands of cell phone you according to your choice.

1 Apple Sony Mobile Samsung HTC LG Blackberry Others 2 3 4 5 6 7

7. Rank the OS for cell phone according to your preference.

1 Symbian iOS Android BlackBerry OS Others

8. What are your deciding factors before buying a cell phone?

Brand Price Quality Functions Style

9. Features preferred while purchasing a mobile phone?

Sound Quality Camera Touch Screen Compatible Apps Screen Size

10. How important are the advertisements that you come across before buying a cell phone?
Irrelevant and not required Very useful and necessary Sometimes relevant Useful

Sampling:
We have used the Convenience Sampling Method. The primary sample of 600 in which 25 were working professionals and the rest 28 are students. From our sample size we came to understand that mobile handsets which came up with latest handsets would be preferred by students and the younger segment of the working professionals. Population Size: 600 Students of our batch in the age group of 19-31. Sample Size: 53

Hypotheses:

To further prove our analysis we had taken three hypotheses into consideration which proved vital in understanding the buying behavior of mobile handsets and the preference for the purchase of mobile handsets. To prove the hypothesis, Chi-Square test is performed. Through the entire process of our study we also came to understand the brand preference and thebrand recall of Apple is higher as compared to the rest in the mobile handset industry in India.

Data Analysis
DESCRIPTIVE ANALYSIS STEPS Bivariate Analysis: Hypothesis of demographic factors and mobile phone buying behaviour. First we did the Cross Tabulation (Chi-Square analysis) to find if theres any significant difference in buying behavior. The null and alternative hypotheses were: H0 = There is no significant difference in the preferences of population about the variable. H1 = There is significant difference in the preferences of population regarding the variable. If Pearsons chi square value is more than 0.05, then we will accept the null hypothesis. Research Question: 1 Is there an association between occupation of a person and features of a mobile handset? Hypothesis: H0: There exists no association between occupation of a person and features of a mobile handset. H1: There exists a relationship between occupation of a person and features of a mobile handset. Applying Chi-Square Test, the results are as follows,

occupation * features preferred Cross tabulation Count features preferred sound quality occupation student business service Total 4 0 4 8 camera 5 0 2 7 touch screen 6 1 7 14 compatible apps 9 0 5 14 screen size 4 0 6 10 Total 28 1 24 53

Chi-Square Tests

age * cell priority Cross tabulation Asymp. Sig. (2Value Pearson Chi-Square Likelihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear Association N of Valid Cases 5.480
a

df 8 8 1

sided) .705 .717 .687

5.376 .163 53

a. 10 cells (66.7%) have expected count less than 5.

Pearsons chi square value is more than 0.05, then we will accept the null hypothesis. There exists no relationship between occupation of a person and features of a mobile handset. Research Question: 2 Is there an association between age of a person and cell phone priority? Hypothesis: H0: There exists no association between age of a person and cell phone priority. H1: There exists an association between age of a person and cell phone priority. Applying Chi-Square Test, the results are as follows,

Count cell priority Apple age 21-25 26-30 31-35 Total 31 8 1 40 Sony 1 1 1 3 Samsung 0 3 0 3 Htc 0 1 0 1 Lg 0 1 0 1 Blackberry 3 1 0 4 other 0 1 0 1 Total 35 16 2 53

Chi-Square Tests Asymp. Sig. (2Value Pearson Chi-Square Likelihood Ratio Linear-by-Linear Association N of Valid Cases 23.896
a

df 12 12 1

sided) .021 .059 .097

20.459 2.754 53

a. 19 cells (90.5%) have expected count less than 5.

Pearsons chi square value is less than 0.05, then we will reject the null hypothesis. There exists a relationship between age of a person and cell phone priority.

Research Question: 3 Important factors considered before buying a cell phone. Applying univariate non-parametric test we can see that gender, age, occupation, cell phone purpose, cell priority, os priority, adv. importance are the major influencing factor as significance value is less than 0.05.

LIMITATIONS Although we have taken proper care, still there are certain limitations that were unavoidable in our survey. We chose a sample of students only from our college, which could be one of the reasons of selection bias. Another limitation was that the sample size was only 53. A greater sample size could have given us a better result. The survey itself carries a limitation of its own. It depends upon the assumption that the respondent is rational and will fill the form in a genuine manner. Data entry error due to Parallax may creep in while transforming the data from questionnaire into the excel files.

Facility and Special Requirement Software Requirements: SPSS Ver 18 Website Requirement for Survey: www.surveymonkey.com

Bibliography
Books:
1. Business Research Methods 11th Edition by Donald R Cooper, Pamela S Schindler, J K Sharma

Web Resources:
http://www.slideshare.net/anthonyyeong/introduction-to-business-research-methods http://finddoc.blog.com/files/2010/08/introduction-to-research-methods.pdf http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/