Despite the fact that there is a plethora of research regarding the mobile phone feature preferences, there appears to be lack of research regarding the relationship between the feature preferences and their relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intent. Therefore the objective of this research is to investigate the mobile phone feature preferences among male respondents in Finland. In conjunction with this the conceptualization of the feature preferences is studied as well as their relationship to customer satisfaction and repurchase intent of the mobile phone. The results indicate that battery/talk time is the most important feature for the respondents. The respondents perceive there to be six logical factors among the feature preferences as follows: business functionality, support functions, aesthetics + design, parts + processes, solidity, and tones + games. The first three correlate with customer satisfaction, and only the business functionality factor correlates with repurchase intent. Finally the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intent is investigated, and comparisons to similar studies are made. Limitations and managerial implications are discussed.
The cell phone can be perceived to be a ubiquitous communication device. The recent statistics provided by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) (2010) indicate that the mobile cellular subscriptions exceeded 5 billion worldwide early 2010. Finland has been one of the pioneers in the adaption of the mobile technology, and the penetration is currently above 1.41 mobile subscriptions per person. The mobile phone penetration in Australia on the other hand has been slightly lower exceeding 1.00 person in 2007 and being approximately 1.14 in 2009. The manufacturers of the cell phones have been adding more or less relevant features to the mobile phones since the introduction of the mobile phone to the consumer markets. These features include for example video, multimedia messaging, and GPS just to mention a few.
The previous research has investigated the mobile phone feature preferences in some detail. For example Işıklar and Buyuközkan (2007) proposed a multi-criteria decision making approach for the purpose of assessing mobile phones as regards to the user’s feature preferences order among youth in Turkey. This approach, however, has not been validated with robust statistical methods, nor has been tested in other country settings. In addition Işıklar and Buyuközkan (2007) did not test the relationship between feature preferences and customer satisfaction and repurchase intent. Economides and Grousopoulou (2009) also investigated the importance of a limited feature set, services and costs among young male and female users. Again the relationship between the feature preferences and customer satisfaction and repurchase intent was not investigated. Han et al. (2004) incorporated the user satisfaction into their study, but the relationship was studied with design (aesthetics) features, not with the features preferences per se. In addition repurchase intentions were not studied. Zhou and Nakamoto (2007) also investigated how the enhanced and unique features affect product preferences, and the moderating role of product familiarity in this relationship, but again the relationship with customer satisfaction and repurchase intent was not examined. Finally Goode et al. (2005) studied the relationship between customer satisfaction and key input factors like experience of product quality, level of service charges, level of call charges, and level of satisfaction with the service provider in the context of mobile phones. In conclusion there appears to be a plethora of research regarding the cell phone feature preferences on one hand, and customer satisfaction in the context of the mobile phones on the other, but research dealing directly with the relationship of mobile phone features preferences and customer satisfaction appears to be lacking.
As regards to comparing the feature preferences between males and females, there are a few studies, which have addressed this issue (Economides and Grousopoulou, 2009, Glasscock and Wogalter, 2006, Haverila, forthcoming and Işıklar and Buyuközkan, 2007). All of these studies found differences between the genders regarding the feature preferences. Regarding the use of communications technology the previous research has discovered that the attitudes of males are more favorable towards the use of communications technology, and also that the use of computers is stereotypically perceived to be predominantly a male activity (Busch, 1995, Jackson et al., 2001 and Jackson et al., 2008). The studies, which have compared customer satisfaction between genders, have indicated the gender might have an impact on customer satisfaction and particularly on the drivers of customer satisfaction (Bryant and Cha, 1996, Danaher, 1998, Mittal and Kamakura, 2001, Sánchez-Hernández et al., 2010 and Söderlund, 2002). For these reasons it was decided that the study will be conducted only from the point of view of male users of the mobile phone.
The purpose of this paper is to investigate what is the importance of the mobile phone feature preferences and also what is their relationship with customer satisfaction and repurchase intent among the young male users. Thus the research objectives are following. The first research objective is to investigate what is the order of importance of the feature preferences among the male users. The second research objective is to examine how do the male users conceptualize the feature preferences, and the third research objective is to study if there is a relationship between the conceptualized feature preference factors, and customer satisfaction and the repurchase intent of the mobile phone. The final and fourth research objective is to investigate the nature of the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intent. These research questions are important to answer given the growing importance and changing role of mobile phones in the modern culture globally. There are many other things (e.g. the quality of the relationship between the customer and the retailer/manufacturer, and the social status (Martensen, 2007)) in play determining the ultimate customer satisfaction and the repurchase intent. This study concentrates, however, on the relationship of product feature preferences, and customer satisfaction and the repurchase intent only.
This research is organized as follows. After the introduction the theoretical aspects of mobile phone feature preferences, customer satisfaction and repurchase intent are discussed. This is followed by the methodology of the research, the data analysis, and discussion section, and finally future research possibilities, managerial implications as well as the limitations will be discussed.
The purpose of the study was to investigate the mobile phone feature preferences among male users in Finland. Expectedly the battery/talk time was the most important mobile phone feature. As regards to the conceptualization of the mobile phone feature preferences there were six factors discovered among the respondents’ feature preferences. Three of these factors (business functionality, standard parts and processes, and aesthetics and design) correlated with customer satisfaction in the multiple regression model, and only one, business functionality, correlated with the behavioral loyalty (repurchase intent).
Finally the relationship between customer satisfaction and repurchase intent was analyzed. A significant, but moderate, correlation was discovered. The relationship graph between the customer satisfaction and repurchase intent constructs indicated similarity with similar industries (automobiles and computers) in the graph in the Jones and Sasser (1995) article, but only at customer satisfaction levels above 4. The relationship appeared to be at plateau level when customer satisfaction levels were below 4. It could be that the reason for this is in the evolution of technology. Thus if the customers are unhappy with their current mobile phone, but are aware of the better technology in the newer brands of the manufacturer, and since they have experience with the user interface (i.e. the standard processes) and the features (Kim and Srinivasan, 2009), their aim is to buy the same brand. This finding is consistent with a recent research by Tseng and Lo (2011) who discovered that when the customers are not satisfied with their current phone, and they perceive next-generation mobile phones as being easier to use and more useful than their current model phones, they are more likely to upgrade their mobile phones to the next-generation models. Finally it is possible that the prior experience with the user interface and the features reflect a switching barrier to the purchasing of new mobile phone brands, which have been discovered to significantly impact customer retention (Lam et al., 2004, Mittal and Lassar, 1998 and Keaveney, 1995) also in the mobile phone industry (Oyeniyi and Abiodun, 2010).
