Customer criteria of smartphone brand choices among Thai generation Y.

Abstract

Nowadays, Smartphone is one of technology gadgets that can desire to customer in term of convenience and their lifestyle. Its market has high competition and has increasing number of Smartphone subscribers every year. However, some Smartphone brand gain more revenue and perform well. The researcher believes that studying Thai generation Y of Smartphone purchasing toward five factors will help sellers to more understand customer whether which factor can drive and make more opportunities to gain revenue and emphasize the way it should be. The researcher did in-depth interview based on consumer purchasing decision process by Kotler, emphasize in purchase-decision stage, to extract customer’s criteria and their reason in purchasing current Smartphone, also did online questionnaire to validate result from telephone interview. Both In-depth interview and online survey were selected respondents with gender equally amount. The finding shows that product feature, brand and convenient concern are Influenced toward both male and female, so these three factor are needed to make marketing strategy to reach customer preference. However, social influence and price are no/less effected. The researcher provide suggestion that might be benefit for Smartphone companies to improve Smartphone in order to meet the demand of customer and recommend other criteria factor that can be worth for further research in the future. KEY WORDS: SMARTPHONE/PURCHASE/GENERATION Y/THAI/CRITERIA