Cause of Various Mobile Phones Consuming for Students - Literature review Example

Cause of various mobile phones consuming for students in University of ABC Literature Review 1. Brand Preference and Advertisement The primary source of the knowledge a consumer gets about mobile phones is from their own experience, word of mouth and advertisements. Advertisements help brands make the consumers more brand loyal by making them less price sensitive. The most critical impact happens when a consumer is exposed to advertisements. Regular exposure changes consumers’ attitude and behavior (Evans, Moutinho & Van Raaij, 1996). To increase the recall, the advertisement should hold its target consumer group’s attention. Irrespective of the content of the advertisement, it has been see that the category dominant brands have a lasting impact, reason being the influence of the brand itself (Simon, 1970). So, even if an advertisement’s content is perfect, it may not be impactful if the brand is less popular. The audience’s positive or negative response towards the advertisement does not necessarily lead to brand approval or refusal (Biehal, Stephens and Curlo, 1992). Therefore, even if the consumer may display positive response towards an advertisement, they might as well not prefer the brand during their purchase decision process. Generally, consumers consider both their attitudes towards the brand as well as the advertisement while making purchase decisions. Different genders tend to interpret advertisements differently based on their own judgements and attitudes (Hogg and Garrow, 2003; Maldonando, Tansuhaj and Muehling, 2003; Putrevu, 2001). Research studies have shown that female consumer, in contrast with male counterparts, tend to involve more deeply into the details of the brand (Maldonado & Muehling, 2003). Women tend to pay more detailing attention about the ad characteristics when exposed to advertisement message (Hogg and Garrow, 2003). The researchers argue that it may be attributed to the characteristics of females’ reliance on outside information and information related to other people. They attribute women as “Comprehensive Processors” trying to assimilate all knowledge associated with the product. Alreck and Settle (1999), proposed six steps of developing brand preferences – a. Need Association – the brand associated to need through repeated information packages b. Mood Association – associate brands with positive emotions through soothing music, lyrics, and taglines c. Subconscious motivation – using symbolic figures to stimulate consumers’ subconscious motives d. Behavior modification – consumers are virtually compelled for a repeat purchase behavior by controlling cues and related relevant rewards e. Cognitive processing – destroying the perceptive and cognitive hurdles to generate positive attitude related to the brand f. Model emulation – exposing consumers to the ideal lifestyle for them to follow The limitation to this research was that it concentrated on the intangible aspects of influencing brand preference. The study’s focus was not on the impact of tangible aspects like product characteristics on the brand preferences. Advertisements have the power to alter consumers’ perception of a brand in terms of attributes content and also significantly affect consumers’ preference for attributes (Gwin and Gwin, 2003). 2. Brand Preference and Product attribute Attributes are the characteristics or features that a product may or may not possess and incorporates both intrinsic and extrinsic characters (Mowen and Minor, 1998). Benefits are nothing but the positive outcomes from the attributes associated with the product. Consumers search for the products that have the attributes that can satisfy their needs (Mowen and Minor, 1998). Having known the reason a consumer prefers a product based upon its attributes helps the brand managers understand the reason why consumers choose certain brands over others (Gwin and Gwin, 2003). The Lancaster model of consumer demand, popularly known as product attributes model (Gwin and Gwin, 2003), is a powerful tool to appraise brand positioning. The authors in the model argue that the consumer choice is based on the characteristics/attributes of a brand. The model assumes each product as a packet of attributes and consumer choice depends on maximizing the use of these attributes as per their needs, keeping financial considerations in mind. The model, like any other one, has its limitations – a. The model is static and deterministic b. It fails to elucidate the process of preference formation towards the attributes c. It fails to elucidate the role of product usage experience in influencing attributes preferences The tangible as well as intangible attributes of a product are equally important in making a brand choice. There is no proof to the argument that some specific attributes are more vital to consumer loyalty as compared to others (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2003). It was, however, discovered that the brands with higher number of positive attributes draw greater loyalty than brands with lesser number of attributes (Romaniuk & Sharp, 2003). Romaniuk & Sharp also recommend that the brand managers should concentrate their attention to the number of attributes the brand should be associated with rather than what attributes. However, the study failed to indicate the type of attributes brand managers should associate their brands with, for instance, tangible or intangible, relevant or irrelevant and others. It is specially imperative that consumers precisely learn about the performance of product attributes as it would affect their product performance analysis by causing memory encode and recovery bias. Unsubstantiated product product attribute relationship beliefs are highly probable to deceive consumers into unrealistic expectations (Mason & Bequette, 1998). If this happens, the product will fall short of expectations resulting into great customer dissatisfaction. Nonetheless, it was observed that, though unrelated, some attributes may still be vital in affecting consumer choice. Importunate preferences for brand attributes occur when there is little uncertainty in the primary product choice for prominent attributes clubbed with experience, even if these attributes may be inappropriate i.e. attributes generally not linked with positive brand outcome (Muthukrishnan & Kardes, 2001). Accordingly, Mason and Bequette (1998) argued that perceptions on the performance of the brand are dominant over the actual product attribute when it comes to the product performance based of significant attributes. Likewise, Myers (2003) found that brand equity is more influenced by information about the attributes more than the preference of the consumers. Consumers of the products of low involvement category (e.g. snack foods, cosmetics) tend to keep a more rational/objective view of the attribute character because of their heavy advertisement and sales promotion. Consumer evaluation of products can be divided into two types - product related (physicals and tangibles) and brand related (images, intangibles) (Rio, Vasquez and Iglesias, 2001). There is a considerable relationship between human values (like security, integrity, achievement, conformity etc), product preference with how consumer perceive the brands (with tangible attributes) and the way they assess the brand like meaning and symbolic attribute significance (Allen, 2001). Human values tend to elevate the significance of product’s attributes that are anyways significant to the consumers. Mason & Bequette (1998) found that consumer perceptions of performance dominate over the actual product performance. Brand managers should be able to identify the most important attributes to the consumers expect and their rating (favorable or unfavorable) to make winning brands. Retailers play an important part in building a brand’s market share by knowing each individual customer’s personal attribute preferences (Warrington & Shim, 2000). Various consumer groups have varied attribute preferences and it is only up to them which attributes they place more importance to (Warrington & Shim, 2000). It was discovered that consumer groups with LP-SB (Low product involvement and Strong Brand preference) emphasize greater importance on product attributes as compared to LP-WB (Low product involvement and Weak Brand preference) whose major focus is on price. Romariuk and Sharp (2003) proposed two aims of brand building – short term and long term. In the short term, the markers should focus on shortlisting the salient attributes and creating an attractive advertisement covering those attributes. In the long run, the marketers should aim to build a ‘Bank’ of related positive perceptions about the brand and associate them with related consumer groups. In this way, marketers will build a group of very loyal consumers making it difficult for competitors to break into the brand’s market share. Increasingly, the consumers have started to associate the brands they use with their self-image and to deliver specific impressions on others. This has made imperative for the brand managers to give the consumers brand name benefits as equally as the product attribute related benefits (del Rio,Vasquez & Iglesiaz, 2001). Consumers can develop biases and prejudices about the brands based on their memory of last experience. So, unsurprisingly, consumers choose brands that offer superior value in consumers brand interactions (Myers, 2003). High brand equity results in high preference and greater market share. 3. Brand Preference and Pricing Decisions Price has a strong relationship to product evaluation. It is a vital attribute that is ofter considered as an indicator of quality making price directly proportional to quality (Mowen & Minor, 1998; Siu & Wong, 2001). Consumers also have a perception that higher price of a product is justified by the greater measures of quality control mechanism (Siu & Wong, 2001). Price can have both favorable and unfavorable effect on consumers. Customers are of two types based on their sensitivity to price – high price sensitive (high elastic demand) and low price sensitive (low elastic demand). High price sensitive customers are likely to shift to the competitors if the current product’s prices are hiked (Mowen & Minor, 1998). List of References: Evans, Moutinho & Van Raaij, (1996). Applied Consumer Behaviour. Addison Wesley Longman: UK Simon, H.A. (1970). Foreword to the book Normative Decision Making by S. Kassouf. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gabriel J. Biehal, Debra Stephens and Eleonora Curlo (1992), "Attitude toward the Ad and Brand Choice", Journal of Advertising, Volume 21, Number 3, (September), 19-36. Putrevu, Sanjay (2001), “Exploring the origins and information processing differences between men and women: Implications for advertisers,’ Academy of Marketing Science Review,1-14. Hogg M.K.; Garrow J. (2003) Gender, identity and the consumption of advertising Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, Volume 6, Number 3, June, pp. 160-174(15) Maldonando, Tansuhaj and Muehling, 2003. The Impact of Gender on Ad Processing: A Social Identity Perspective. Academy of Marketing Science Review , 2003 Alreck, P. L and Settle, R.B (1999) “Strategies forBuilding Consumer Brand Preference” Journal of Product and Brand Management, Vol. 8 No. 2 Gwin, Carol F. and Carl R. Gwin (2003), “Product Attributes Model: A Tool for. Evaluating Brand Positioning,” Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice Mowen, J.C. and Minor, M. (1998), Consumer Behavior, 5th ed., Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ. Romaniuk, J. and B. Sharp (2003). “Brand Salience and Customer Defection in Subscription Markets.” Journal of Marketing Management 19:25-44. Kevin Mason, Joyce Bequette, "Product experience and consumer product attribute inference accuracy". Journal of Consumer Marketing, 1998. Vol: 15 Issue:4. Muthukrishnan, A.V. and Frank R. Kardes (2001), “Persistent Preferences for Product Attributes: The Effects of Initial Choice Context and Uninformative Experience,” Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 28 (June), 89-104. Rio, A.B., Vazquez, R. and Iglesias, V. (2001), “The effects of brand associations on consumer response”, Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 18, No. 5, pp. 410-25. Warrington P & Shim S (2000). “An empirical investigation of the relationship between product involvement and brand commitment.” Psychology and Marketing, 17(September), 761-782. Hiu, A.S.Y., Siu, Y.M., Wang, C.C.L., Chang, L.M.K. (2001), "An investigation of decision-making styles of consumers in China", Journal of Consumer Affairs, Vol. 35 No.2, pp.326-45. Read More