The influence of brand image on Chinese consumers’ decision-making process in the smartphone market

In recent years, the Chinese mobile phone market has grown rapidly, showing the diversification of brands and products. With the increased competition, economic downturn and the reduced frequency of consumers changing mobile phones, mobile phone brands that are not favored by consumers are gradually being eliminated from the market. However, the well-known mobile phone brands have gained the trust of consumers and ushered in rising market share and influence. Therefore, understanding and exploring which dimension in the brand image will promote consumers to buy mobile phones, and how the brand image affects the consumer’s decision-making process is crucial for the company to achieve its development goals and long-term operations. Simultaneously, it can provide theoretical and practical guidance for companies to build a strong brand image. In the past few decades, although brand image and consumer decision-making processes have been hot topics in marketing and have been widely discussed, there is no clear relationship between brand image and consumer decision-making. Therefore, this research is a theoretical exploratory study to explore which dimensions and attributes in the brands image is most influential to the decision-making process of consumers. At the same time, this research is devoted to examining how brand image sways consumer decision-making processes through these attributes. This study uses hermeneutics to explain Chinese consumers’ decision-making process when purchasing mobile phones. Ten in-depth interviews with respondents from the Chinese mobile phone market, each from different occupations and age groups, were conducted. The findings show that Chinese consumers generally choose a well-known brand when purchasing mobile phones. The perceived quality of the product has the most profound influence on the decision-making process of Chinese consumers. Simultaneously, consumer problem identification, information search and evaluation of alternatives, and final purchase decisions may be directly or indirectly influenced by corporate image, shopping environment, shopping experience as well as word of mouth