Motivating Factors Influencing Consumers’ Brand Preferences for mobile phones: University of Gavle Students.

Title: Motivating factors influencing consumers’ Brand preferences for mobile phones: University of Gavle students Level: Final assignment for Master degree in Business Administration (MBA) Authors: Chinedu Ekemba and Emurla Emin Ali Supervisor: Professor Ehsanul Huda Chowdhury Examiner: Professor Maria Fregidou-Malama Date: 2017- June Aim: The aim of this study is to investigate the motivating factors that influence University Gavle students to prefer a particular Mobile phone brand. Method: A qualitative study is carried out based on primary data; the primary data was collected through semi-structured interview with twenty of University of Gavle Students by the use of face to face interview. Result & Conclusion: The study finds out that, the role of word of mouth as extrinsic factors serves as the highest motivating factor, while prestige serves as intrinsic factors of motivation. Thus, word of mouth and quality are the highest motivating factors that influence University of Gavle students to prefer a particular mobile phone brand. This finding of this research will help mobile phone marketers and managers to develop strategy on how to capture Swedish consumers to prefer their companies brand products. Suggestion for future research: Future research could be done by considering different or more widely target groups instead of students of University of Gavle. Different perspectives can be combined in future research thus, further research can be conducted by more broadly with a variety of age groups and in a wider area. Also, further research could include comparison between mobile phone brand types and may consider different type of products. This will give understanding of the different segments in mobile phone market, and to determine if these different segments can cause any variety and change of motivating factors. Additionally, further research could be conducted in the long time period, thus can be explored in detail benefiting from the longitudinal study and could be include observations to understand long-term variables on mobile phone market and effects of motivating factors. Hence, this could bring more effective conceptualization of influencing factors of smartphone buying consumers and helps to achieve a more in-depth research. More so, the same study can be conducted with a combination of different Universities in Sweden. And also, same research can be carried out using quantitative research method for future research. Contribution of the Study: This study contributes with knowledge on which motivating factors influence customers brand preferences, and how these factors affect their purchase decision