Development and innovation in the smartphone industry

Smart phone industry is one of the most dynamic and innovative industry within the competitive economy. Development in technology and innovation has created a definite impact on choices and demands of the consumers. Smart phone has become the basic need of every individual around the world (Yeh, Wang and Yieh, 2016). Different companies are offering Smartphone with advanced technology and exclusive features. This has enhanced competition within the market creating a significant impact on providing wide options to consumers. It has been analyzed that products in smart phone industry have become highly competitive (Matzler, et.al., 2016). Quality, characteristics and features are similar or close to one another however few products are more successful than the other. Companies have adopted effective strategy to position and differentiate their brand from that of the competitor’s brand.

In the current market consumer behaviour has significant influence of brand identity and personality. This concept has helped companies in creating a competitive edge within the market. Today businesses are focusing on positioning their product in unique manner such that it aligns with the personality of the consumers (Hanif and Rodrigues, 2018). Similarly consumers’ buying decisions are widely influenced by brand perception and personalities. For example Nike is perceived to be high quality sports brand offering wide range of athletic products. The concept of Brand personality is defined as a marketing strategy that aligns with human characteristics and perceptions to develop a significant brand concept. Oladepo and Abimbola, (2015) analyzed that brand personality is an effective tool which consumers use to portray their choices and brand preferences. Mirroring consumer preferences and personalities through brand and product mix help companies in creating a strong brand identity within the market. The two major focus of the concept of brand personality is to associate consumer thinking with organizational brand. Similarly it can also be used by the businesses to enhance consumer loyally and demand within the market (Das, 2014).

Analysis of consumer behavior reveals that buyers involve in the process of selection, purchase, use and disposal of products in the specified sequence. Product experience, service efficiency and quality aspects are one segment of consumer satisfaction. On the other hand concept of brand identity plays significant role in influencing consumer purchases. Brand name, identity, symbol, logo etc helps in effective identification of the product within a range of product (Hanif and Rodrigues, 2018). Studies reveal that impact of brand personality has created a significant impact in different industries. Smart phone is one of the most influences industries for the concept. Increasing competition and significant market innovation has helped in creating wide product range for consumers. Developing brand personality for smart phones is one effective strategy which companies are adopting to creating an edge in the economy (Yeh, Wang and Yieh, 2016).

Similarities and differences in smartphone products

The present study will focus on analyzing the strategies which smart phone industries are implementing to influence the consumer buying process. Significant emphasis on the concept of brand personality and its impact on consumer perception will be analyzed and evaluated in the study. An in-depth evaluation of different aspects related to brand personality and its connection with consumer decisions and loyalty will be determined. Analysis of smart phone industry will be undertaken to attain the evidence of the selected concept. An effective base of conceptual analysis, theoretical framework and secondary data will be undertaken to attain a reliable and effective results.

Research questions are the basic framework that describe the operation of a research and thus constitute a majorly important position in order to facilitate the success of research. This research will be reflecting its core associations which are namely brand personality and individual customer behaviour. This research will be based over a single main research question and various sub-research questions. These questions will be largely taken into consideration in order to develop further understanding of the subject and development of the various concepts that are related to the subject of this research.  

How the customer buying possibility in case of smartphone is impacted by brand personality?

What is brand personality?

What are the positive and negative factors related to brand personality?

Different aspects that are important for developing brand personality?

The perception that a researcher makes before getting any relevant results form a research is known as the respective hypothesis. This hypothesis is of majorly importance as it defines as per stage development as well as the requirements that a research is associated with to consider the overall positive result collection.

Two major hypotheses that can be obtained from this research are as follows:

H0: Brand personality largely affects consumer demand of smart phones

H1: Brand personality does not affects consumer demand of smart phones

The development of brand personality is not a theoretically developed concept rather it is a major factor that is related to the development of customer perspective and orientation towards a specific product. According to the views of Elbedweihy, Jayawardhena, Elsharnouby and Elsharnouby, (2016), the development of brand personality is largely related to specified human characteristics and that are specified in a brand name. The engagement of some specific section of customers, who relate with the possible factors that can be achieved by the involvement of brand personality concept, is one of the most important aspects that are related to overall development. The relativity factor which implicates with application of this concept is majorly dependent over the market hold and respective orientation of a product (So et al. 2016). In addition to this, the availability of behavioural traits related to intellectualism, uniqueness and values that signify the association of this concept with customer orientation can be considered as an added advantage for the whole product development process. The use of this process is of major importance in the context of smartphone customer orientation as smartphones in the current social context are a direct reflection of the respective personality trait that s related to the development of an individual. The buying perspectives related to smartphone are at a major scale determined by the availability of required objective fulfilling aspects in addition to the various sectional considerations like income, age and social position of the potential customers (Cha, Yi and Bagozzi, 2016).

Brand personality and its influence on consumer perception and behavior

Another major concept that provides a major perspective in terms of brand personality is its differentiability with brand image. The difference between brand image and brand personality specifies its orientation from the respective organizational importance that a product has, in spite of it this reflects the importance of customer connectivity with the product in terms of emotional as well as behavioural perspectives. According to the views of Davvetas and Diamantopoulos (2017), the popularity of a product is largely described by the available social interaction among humans. The value expressive perspectives which are a result of social interaction of individuals are a major important factor while considering the customer demands and requirements in terms of smartphones.

The theory of self-congruity explains a compatibility aspect that is related to individual self-perspective of the customers and brand personality. The relativity factor, which is defined as a perfect match between value-expressive attributes and the self-concept related to individual customers. According to the views of Shi, Lin, Liu and Hui, (2018), a major fact that is associated with the self-congruity theory is related to the development of an assumption which reflects customer’s preference in order to select a brand is directly driven by congruent personality trait of individuals as well social groups. The application of this theory largely associates with the possible opportunities that are effectively achieved with a coordinative perspective between brand personality and self-personality (Torres, Augusto and Godinho, 2017). The selection of brands in terms of purchase and use by the customers is of major importance as it is largely influenced by the availability of self-analysing ability and perspectives linked to different individuals. In other words, the area and behavioural perspective that is associated with customers in smartphone selection process is largely associated with the overall self-analysis. The application of this theory is an integral part of the various perspectives of brand personality which can be used to facilitate the overall developmental implications which is associated with smartphone brand selection (Guido and Peluso, 2015).   

Initially the customer demand in terms of smartphones was very limited but with the developing technology it has changed a lot. In the current business perspective the potential customers relate their individual personality with the usability of the smartphone and thus an association is of major importance if the respective operational perspectives are taken care of in an effective manner. According to the views of Ismail and Melewar (2015), apart from the availability of attest technological applications and design specification, the smartphone market also requires a significant amount of relatively with respective market orientation in terms of customer personality and requirements that are related to the purchase of products. The application of this theory provides a deep analytical knowledge which describes a relationship between brand personality and customer demands of smartphones (Su and Tong, 2015). The use of this theory will significantly enhance the overall perspective that is related to brand personality and customer alignment towards any specific product and its market development possibilities. The self-congruity theory can be considered as one of the most influential theoretical approach in order to develop a relationship between customer buying behaviour and brand personality (Lieven and Hildebrand, 2016).

The role of brand identity in consumer buying decisions

The concept of brand personality is largely divided in to different fragments in order to facilitate the development of the final goal that is related to market aligning and customer orientation. These factors are equally developed in order to enhance the behavioural perspectives that are related to a brand and its popularity.  

The five most important and core dimensions that constitute brand personality are:

• Sincerity: Sincerity is the development of a honest behavioural perspective with respect to an organization that can be related to customer behaviour. Certain sections of the customers believe that development of a product should be based on honest and cheerful behaviour. These customers require a significant amount of humbleness and a down-to-earth attitude in order to enhance the overall development of the product (Rauschnabel, Krey, Babin and Ivens, 2016). In this particular case, the product which is a smartphone behavioural perspective must be associated with an enormous amount of focus over the wholesomeness attitude so that relevance can be developed.     
• Excitement: Excitement is another fragment that is related to customer orientation and development of further business opportunities especially for the technological perspective of smartphones as it helps in building a collective approach. In addition to this, aspects such as imaginative, spiritual, updated and daring characteristics of customer’s behaviour must be taken into consideration while development of excitement factor. According to the views of Heding, Knudtzen and Bjerre, (2015), the brand personality such as excitement is an important consideration as it helps in developing major responsibilities that facilitate innovation and strategic development of products.   
• Competence: Competency reflects the supportive perspectives that are in accordance with a product or brand. It associates success, reliability and intelligence as some of the most influential perspectives that are related to marketing of a product. These factors create a proper relationship between customer requirements and brand development.   
• Sophistication: A significant section of customers also belong to upper class and thus need the valuation of their social as well as economic standards that need to be developed in order to facilitate the development at a much convincing manner. For example, in the present scenario a section of much sophisticated customer group is largely related to the development and usability of smartphones according to their respective demands and thus the brand personality must be up to their standards and requirements (Roll, 2015). The brand must take care of even the smaller demands and processes that this section of customers requires as majority of them are very perfection oriented customers.  
• Ruggedness: Apart from the above set of customers, availability of toughness and ruggedness in some of the groups is also an important consideration for development of customer behavioural perspectives. This section of customers requires usability oriented development of products so that it could serve their individual perspectives. According to the views of Al-Hawari (2015), this aspect is supposed to facilitate the largest section of customers as there are value based product selection involved.    

An assessment of different research philosophies like positivism, interpretivism and realism provided a major intuition for the use of positivism philosophy. A major factor that is related with the use of positivism philosophy is effective knowledge to attain results through ogics and reasoning. The stated philosophy has been applied in the current study to attain significant results for the analysis. In addition to this, the used of this research philosophy provides objectives that are related to the development of real time based situational analysis of the subject that is included in this research.

The researcher will be using deductive research approach in order to facilitate the overall understanding of respective application of theories and concepts that are in accordance with the application of brand personality in customer decision for smartphones. Observations, conclusions and hypothesis associated with different perspectives of the subjects are of major importance and thus in order to include them in the research, use of deductive approach is compulsory (So, King, Sparks and Wang, 2016).      

This research will be based over descriptive research design as it will initiate a knowledge building perspective that is related to an overall concept development in terms of this research. According to the views of Mackey and Gass (2015), the use of descriptive research design helps in understanding the developmental perspectives that are related to an overall analysis of the data collection process and ultimately helps in initiating the positive result attainment for the research.

The research will be based on data that must be collected from majority of the impacted groups that are the respective customers of smartphones and the companies which are producing it. A large number of samples must be collected so that a wide scale analysis can be carried out. According to the views of Lewis (2015), association of major possibilities that instigate an overall development in research are directly related to the amount as well as the quality of samples that are taken into account.    

A large section of the information collection that is carried out in this research will be based on secondary research. A significant amount of books, online journals and previously conducted research papers should be taken into consideration in order to collect relevant information about the subject. The information collected through this process will be largely related with an association of major conceptual understanding that can be developed in relation with the respective topic.     

Strategies adopted by smartphone companies for differentiation and positioning

Primary data collection

The researcher will be using different methods of primary research such as surveys, personal interviews and development of questionnaire. The use of these methods for data collection can be very beneficial for analysing the perspectives of a wide range of participants and thus improve the quality of responses from the data collection process. A major section of this process is associated with development of informative knowledge regarding customer buying behaviours and influence of brand personality on smartphone marketing (Lewis, 2015).    

Ethics play a major role in order to facilitate the overall development of a research in an effective manner and thus in order to apply this fact in this perspective, some of the ethical considerations is important to take into account. The availability of ethics provide a sustainable approach to the research and thus increases its value by several times.

Two major ethical considerations that are highly important for the success of this research are:

• Privacy: In order to facilitate the proper conduction of this research privacy and security aspects that are related to collection and storage of information during various interactive process like surveys, interviews and opinion polls. The researcher must ensure privacy of collected data as it is the sole responsibility and most important aspect of a researcher (Mackey and Gass, 2015).   
• Consent: The researcher must have appropriate consent from the individual whose data will be taken into consideration. A research cannot be performed by collecting information without the consent of the impacted audience as it is ethically not acceptable. According to the views of (), usability and association of any information that is collected unethically in order to complete a research is not accepted and thus the data collection method should be ethically inclined.

A research is of major importance in respect of the time limitations provided to it and thus each and every process associated with it must be completed in the pre-specified time. In order to facilitate the on-time completion of a research availability of an efficient time frame is of major importance. This research also has some important aspects that need to be completed in pre-specified time in order to eliminate the chances of negative impacts.

The following Gant chart depicts various events and their respective orientation with respect to the time allocated to each of them.   

Conclusion

A major conclusion that can be drawn from this research depicts the importance of brand personality as a major factor in order to influence the customer behaviour for smartphone market. It provides a summative association of various aspects that are in relation with individual perspectives that instigate for a development in customer buying behaviour. This research proposal depicts the association of different behavioural as well as social perspectives that account for an overall development of smartphone buying decision. In addition to this, a major theory named self-congruity theory is also discussed in order to facilitate the development of relevant relationship among customer buying behaviour and brand personality. The application of this theory is considered to be a major driving factor that provides huge amount of understanding related to this subject. This research is carried out in an extensive manner so that each and every perspective that is related to development of major organizational dependency over factors like brand personality and brand image. In addition to this, all of the five dimensions which are considered as core aspects are largely discussed in this research proposal. The data collection process, which is based on secondary and primary segments, has facilitated the availability of huge amount of information for the research.

Research questions related to brand personality and consumer behavior

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