Factors Affecting Consumer Purchase Intention of Smartphones: A Case of Hawassa City

Abstract

The growing need and fast development of technology in the era of globalization, free markets, and more fierce competition made the company produce products to satisfy the diverse needs of customers, particularly within the smartphone industries. The major objective of this study was to assess factors affecting consumers' purchase intention of smartphones; a case of Hawassa city. A structured schedule that has three sections was used to collect the primary data. A complete sample of 385 consumers selected by employing the population precision method. The enumerator administered schedule is distributed to all the selected consumers. The research used a systematic random sampling technique at the time of data collection. However, only 356 consumers responded genuinely, and hence, the response rate was 92.46 percent. Descriptive and inferential statistical tools such as; frequency tables, percentages, means, standard deviations, Pearson correlation, and multiple regression analysis were used to data analysis. The result of the adjusted R square is 0.645, which demonstrates that 64.5 percent of purchase intention variation can be explained by the independent variables. Based on the statistical analyses, all variables namely price, product feature, brand name, advertising, and social influence have a positive relationship with the consumers’ purchase intention. The researcher has drawn the following recommendations. Smartphone manufacturers and marketers should carry out a periodic survey to help in identifying new features and decide which ones to add to its product, follow a value-based pricing strategy, strive to create positive word of mouth among consumers, advertising messages should be designed in a manner that is clear, understandable and not offensive to the consumers and build their strong brand name; establish the link of their brand name with the consumers through unique sources of communication.