Investigating the Factors That Determine Tertiary Students Brand Choice of Mobile Phones in Northern Ghana

Michael Dergol-Dery

doi:10.11648/j.ijics.20170202.12

Abstract

This paper investigated the factors affecting students brand choice for mobile phones among university students at the University for Development Studies, Navrongo Campus in the Upper East region of Ghana. The research was a cross-sectional design with 300 students. The students were chosen using stratified random sampling. Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 20 was used to analyze the data. The results show that three major factors directly influencing students choice of brand of mobile phones in this study were user-friendliness, quality and price. Among all the mobile phone brands, the most used brands by the students were Nokia and Samsung. Nokia and Samsung together constituted 56 percent of phones used by the respondents. However, for future use, 45 percent are planning to use Nokia while 61 percent for Samsung. The price of mobile phones ranged between GH₵ 50.00 and GH₵ 301.00. Fashion and durability were factors that correlated and have relationships with the decision to buy a brand of mobile phone. This is one of the few studies in consumer behavior to assess preferences in a consumption context of mobile phone industry. The findings are useful for mobile phone dealers and manufacturers to incorporate these preferences by diversifying the types of mobile phones with different ranges of corresponding prices to meet consumers’ needs and income levels.

Highlights

Mobile phones are one of the modern telecommunication technologies that have emerged over the past decades to facilitate communication among people within and across countries
Brands of Mobile Phone Used and Preference Among all the mobile phone brands, the most used brand among the respondents was Nokia31% followed by Samsung 25%
This study has thrown some light on the preferred brand of mobile phones of a cross section of students in Ghana

Summary

Introduction

Mobile phones are one of the modern telecommunication technologies that have emerged over the past decades to facilitate communication among people within and across countries. It has become a key communication tool and an essential part of everyday lives [1] and in both private and public institutions in Ghana. Ghana liberalized its telecommunication sector in the early 1990s to provide consumers with better, new and less costly telecom services [2]. This was done through the introduction of a five-year Accelerated Development Programme in 1994, to allow private participation in all sectors of the telecom industry [3]. Apart from the acquisition of the phone and the type of phone one possesses is the issue

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Discussion

Conclusion