Factors Influencing Purchase Intention of Cellular Phones Among the University Students in Bangladesh

Uses of cellular phone among the university students are increasing in Bangladesh. To capture this growing market segment and meeting their diverse demand, it is important for the manufacturers and marketers of cellular phone to know about the factors that these young truly judge. This study is undertaken to find out the factors that affect young Bangladeshi university students’ intention to purchase cellular phone. Through using a structured questionnaire, completed responses of 350 respondents were collected by applying convenience sampling technique. To test the reliability of the collected data, Cronbach’s alpha was measured. Besides this, Regression and ANOVA is used to explain the relationship between the factors affecting university students’ cell phone purchase intention and test the proposed hypotheses. Statistical package for the social sciences ( SPSS) version 21.0 was used to perform the statistical tests. This study found significant influence of cell phone price, cell phone feature, brand name and social influence on university students’ cellular phone purchase intention. Findings of the study will help the cellular phone manufacturers and marketers to design their youth centric marketing strategies. Moreover, managerial implications along with the directions for future research have also been discussed. Keywords: Cellular Phone, Purchase Intention, Product Price, Product Features, Brand Name, Social Influence, Ease of Use, Promotion of the Brand. DOI : 10.7176/EJBM/11-2-10

(Techspirited, n. d.) but the Bangladeshi users are accustomed very much with two types of mobile phones, namely feature phone and smartphone (Uddin et al., 2015). Although with the launching of 4G network, the demand for smartphone found increasing in Bangladesh, but a recent report of mobile handsets importers revealed that feature phones gained popularity while smartphones sales dropped as growth rate of smartphone was just 1% while the feature phones grew by 14% in Bangladesh (Halim, 2018). Popularity of cellular phones is increasing at all levels, as the users get connected with their family and friends by using different social networking sites (Suki & Suki, 2013), especially among the students of college and university (Suki, 2013;Falayi & Adedokun, 2014). Although prior studies found that, the mobile phone handset market is growing on an average five to ten percent per year, but the struggle among the mobile phone marketers rising as the average revenue per user is falling accompanied with increased price competition (Hansen, 2003) and global economic downturn (Karjaluoto et al., 2005). Besides, due to the increasing competition among the existing companies and change in the customer taste, cellular phone market is highly unstable (Walia & Singla, 2017). In the current extremely competitive mobile phone market, manufacturers of different brands constantly fight to differentiate themselves so that consumers select their mobile phone brand instead of the competing brands (Sata, 2013).
The increase of mobile phone users and uses draws attention of diverse group of executives, academicians, and researchers regarding the factors that influence the users purchase intention and behavior (Park & Yang, 2006;Uddin et al., 2015;Walia & Singla, 2017). Their studies identified a range of items or factors influencing purchase intention and decision. These factors include product price, product features, perceived quality, brand name, durability, social factors, easy handling, ease of use, promotion of brands, phone size, appearance and so on (Liu, 2002;Park & Chen, 2007;Li & Li, 2010;Azad & Safaei, 2012;Keelson, 2012;Sata, 2013;Uddin et al., 2015;Kaushal & Kumar, 2016). But very few research efforts have been given in the context of Bangladesh, particularly on the purchase intention of cellular phone among young customers from its universities. Therefore, the researcher undertakes the current study on the students of Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur to find out the underlying factors that the university students usually think about while purchasing cellular phones. The study findings will help the cell phone manufacturers and marketers for devising appropriate strategy through providing important insights on young customers' mobile phone purchase intentions; help the young customers in expressing their views on the influential factors for getting their desired phone with their preferred configurations; along with some contributions in the existing cellular phone purchase intention and behavior literature.
The arrangement of the remaining parts of this paper starts with relevant literature review regarding product price, product feature, brand name, social influence, ease of use, and promotion of the brand on purchase intention along with the proposed hypotheses. Conceptual framework is presented in the subsequent section. The next section describes the methodology followed in this study. Data analysis, findings and discussion on results section are presented after that. The last section describes the managerial implications and future research directions with concluding remarks.

Objectives of the Study
The objectives of this study includes-• To explore the prior studies related to the young customers cellular phone purchase intention.
• To find out the most influential factors that influence young student's intention to purchase of cellular phone.

Literature Review and Development of Hypotheses
There are number of factors that influence consumers' intention to purchase cellular phone. A good number of scholars (e.g. Cooper, 2001;Campbell and Russo, 2003;Park and Yang, 2006;Van Biljon and Kotzé, 2008;Petruzzellis, 2010;Azad and Safaei, 2012;Sata, 2013;Uddin et al., 2015;Walia and Singla, 2017) have already conducted quality research in this area. Based on the findings of the prior research, the researcher choose six factors namely product price, product feature, brand name, social influence, ease of use and promotion of the brand that influence customers purchase intention of cellular phone.

Cellular Phone
The cellular phone, popularly known as cell phone or mobile phone, is an electronic communication device that the users use for companionship and telesociability (Kopomaa, 2000). It is a device that links an individual with social networks (Oksman, 2010) and provide a mechanism to get connected, a plaything to fun, a means for entertainment, a device for surfing the web, a reliever to tedious life and device to keep the people busy (Uddin, Xu & Azim, 2015). There are various types of cell phones such as basic phone or feature phone that are mainly used for telephony purposes; mp3 or music phone that are used specially for listening music; camera phone which is designed with superior photo capturing capability; and smartphone that are equipped with sophisticated connectivity, faster internet accessibility and enhanced computing capability (Techspirited, n. d.;Falayi and Adedokun, 2014). But customers in Bangladesh are familiar mainly with two grouping of mobile phones-basic or feature phone, and smartphone.

Purchase Intention
Purchase intention is the customers preplanning of purchasing specific products in future (Warshaw & Davis, 1985). It shows the consumers' tendency of potential purchasing action that helps in measuring their actual purchase behavior (Trivedi & Raval, 2016). It explains the consumer's product categorization and formation of their preference for purchasing the product (Zeithaml, 1988). It is the consumers' willingness to buy a product. Consumer's willingness to purchase is reflected in his or her intention to purchase (Schiffman & Kanuk, 2000). Consumer intention to buy and use a product can be explained through the traditional five-step process involving knowing the need, searching for accessible information, assessing the alternatives, buying the product and making the post-buying appraisal; which is applicable for both individual product and brand choice (Dorsch, Grove, and Darden, 2000). Consumer's intention to buy mobile phone also follows this traditional buying approach (Karjaluoto et al., 2005). Whenever any consumer intend to buy a smartphone, they usually considers brand name, product quality, product price, recreational capability, function ability, durability etc. (Rahim et al., 2016;Tran, 2018) which also applicable for basic or features phones.

Product Price
Mobile phones' price is an important factor that many consumers considered in choosing a mobile phone model (Karjaluoto et al., 2003). In particular, younger customers considers price besides the technological advancements while purchasing any mobile phone (Karjaluoto et al., 2005). Price is the sum of money that consumers usually pay for acquiring and using any product (Kotler, Armstrong, Agnihotri & Haque, 2010).
Whether the consumer buy a mobile handset often significantly affected by its price (Chapman & Wahlers, 1999;Munnukka, 2005;Uddin et al., 2015). Suki (2013) also argued that product price significantly affect young university students' smartphone choice and buying behavior. That means, consumers' intention to buy a mobile phone, whether feature or smartphone, depends largely on the price of that mobile phone. Many prior studies (e.g. Lay-Yee, Kok-Siew and Yin Fah, 2013;Suki, 2013;Falayi and Adedokun, 2014;Kaushal and Kumar, 2016;Lin et al., 2017) also suggest that price of the product have significant influence on intention to purchase the product. Hence, the researcher proposed the following hypothesis: H1: Product price has significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention.

Product Feature
The attributes of product that the consumers' acquire and use to satisfy their needs and wants can be termed as the product feature (Kotler et al., 2010). Physical attributes of the product such as artistic and stylish design, storage space or capacity, battery durability, screen size, buttons and related parts and processes etc. affect the choice of consumers (Brewster, 2002;Haverila, 2011;Haverila, 2012;Suki, 2013). Consumers often consider design as the most significant determinant of their purchase decision (Crilly, Moultrie & Clarkson, 2004). Both the hardware and software components of cellular phone are developing continuously that the customers consider before purchase (Osman, Talib, Sanusi, Shiang-Yen & Alwi, 2012;Lay-Yee et al., 2013). Besides basic calling and texting, modern customers also value the entertaining capability such as playing games, listening music, watching movie, and connecting to people using social networking sites (Moon & Kim, 2001;Uddin et al., 2015). Previous studies also found that the young students of colleges and universities consider phone size, weight, color, physical appearance, menu organization, and related programs and processes of a Smartphone before purchasing (Lay-Yee et al., 2013;Suki, 2013;Suki & Suki, 2013;Falayi & Adedukun, 2014;Rahim et al., 2016). Thus, the researcher developed the following hypothesis: H2: Product features have significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention.

Brand Name
Brand can be viewed as a name, term, sign, symbol, design, or a combination of all these aspects that identify and differentiate seller's products from its competitors (Kotler & Keller, 2006). Brands are not just names and symbols, but more than that which links customers with the company. Brand name significantly affects consumer's purchase behavior (Kaushal & Kumar, 2016). Brand or brand name reflects status symbol, helps in exhibiting product information, and specify product in the market (Suki, 2013). Brand name of products or services is increasingly treated as one of the most precious assets of the company (Cornelis, 2010). Brand names are such priceless assets that suggest precious knowledge structures and quality related to the brand (Srinivasan & Till, 2002). Users often prefer a broadly recognized and accepted brand of cellular phone. Khasawneh and Hasouneh (2010) suggested that the brand name of product's influence consumers' product evaluation and affects their actual purchase intention. Prior research in this field also confirms the effects of brand name on consumers purchase intention of cellular phone (Lay-Yee et al., 2013;Suki, 2013;Wollenberg & Thuong, 2014;Kaushal & Kumar, 2016). Therefore, the researcher projected the following hypothesis: H3: Brand name has significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention.

Social Influence
Another important factor that influence consumers purchase intention is the society they belong, the family, friends and peers they are associated with. When a person's feelings, thoughts, attitude, and behavior changed with the intentional or unintentional influence of other persons in the society, then it can be treated as social influence (Rashotte, 2007). Consumers are naturally influenced by the persons whom they treat as important while making the buying decision of a particular product or brand (Kaushal & Kumar, 2016). Social influence includes the influence of consumer's parents and other family members, social group, community feelings, media, opinion leaders, peers, and friends etc. that also restricts consumer's purchase behavior (Jiang, 2004;Nelson & McLeod, 2005;Auter, 2007). Before buying a cellular phone, young consumers' often thinks of whether their friends, family members or peers like it. In many previous studies, social influence has been confirmed as having significant influence on consumer's cellular phone purchase decision (Ibrahim, Subari, Kassim & Mohamood, 2013;Suki, 2013;Uddin et al., 2015). Hence, the researcher proposed the following hypothesis: H4: Social influence has significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention.

Ease of Use
People, whether young or aged, normally try to avoid complexity. As cellular phone is a technical product, they often preferred phones that are easy to operate. When buying a mobile phone, most of the people feel comfortable in buying a phone which they can operate easily and with minimum effort (Park & Chen, 2007;Dunlop & Brewster, 2002). Ease of use represents the scope to which a system can be used with a minimum level of efforts by its user (Davis, 1989) and is associated with easy learning, unproblematic and convenient use, flexibility and less complexity (Davis, Bagozzi & Warshaw, 1989). Consumers frequently asses a particular mobile phone brand's ease of use with convenience that is how easily they can get and use the phone. Consumers are interested to buy a mobile phone which is easily available and involves less complexity in using (Uddin et al., 2015). Previous studies (e.g. Ting, Lim, Patanmacia, Low and Ker, 2011;Lay-Yee et al., 2013;Suki and Suki, 2013) also suggested that convenience and ease of use have significant impact in determining consumer's purchase intension. Thus, the researcher developed the following hypothesis: H5: Ease of use has significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention.

Promotion of the Brand
Manufacturers or marketers not only produce the products, but also communicates products value with their intended users. Success of any product largely depends on the successful promotion of its product value. The tools companies use in communicating the value of product to customers constitutes the promotional mix involving tools like advertising, personal selling, sales promotion, public relations, and direct-marketing (Kotler et al., 2010). By using these tools, sellers inform the customers regarding their cell phone quality, features, price or any other related offers that may persuade the customers for buying their cell phone brand. Duarte and Raposo (2010) argued that advertising is one of the important factors that affect mobile phone users brand preferences. Uddin et al., (2015) suggested that television commercial can inform about the mobile phone and multiplies its appeal to the potential buyers. A study by Chi, Yeh and Tsai (2011) concludes that advertising and celebrity endorsement have significant influence on consumer purchase intention. Hence, the researcher proposed the following hypothesis: H6: Promotion of the brand has significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention.

Conceptual Framework of the Study
The researcher reviewed lots of books, journals, newspapers etc. to gain important insights regarding the study. After going through a large number of such literatures relevant to this present study, the researcher proposed a conceptual framework for this study. Through the conceptual framework or the proposed model, the researcher tries to demonstrate the causal relationship between the independent variables (product price, product feature, brand name, social influence, ease of use and promotion of the brand) and the dependent variable (purchase intention of cellular phone) regarding the university students intention to purchase cellular phone in Bangladesh.

Research Methodology
Through analyzing secondary data and pilot survey consisting of 30 samples, exploratory research was conducted at the primary phase of the study in order to identify the factors that influence university students' intention to purchase cellular phone. Descriptive research was then conducted through developing and analyzing a self-administered structured questionnaire. Through an extensive review of numerous journals, books and lots of other internet-based websites, the researcher gathered necessary secondary data. Primary data was then collected through face-to-face personal interview with the respondents. This study adopted a non-probabilistic convenient sampling technique that many other researchers have used for this type of study (Lin et al., 2017). The researcher collected responses from 380 respondents. But after eliminating the problematic responses, 350 questionnaires were selected for analysis in the final study. Thus the sample size considered in this study is 350. Sampling unit for the study consists of the students of Begum Rokeya University, Rangpur who bought and were using mobile phones. Cronbach's alpha is used to test the reliability of the collected data. Regression and ANOVA is used to explain the relationship between the factors affecting university students' cell phone purchase intention and test the proposed hypotheses. Statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 21.0 was used to perform the statistical tests.

Demographic Profile of the Respondent
Respondents' demographic profile shows that 69.7% of the respondents are male and 30.3% are female. Major portion of the cell phone users (86.9%) fall in between the age group of 18 to 25 years. Most of the students are undergraduate students (61.7%) and 28.9% of them have completed their graduation. Students' income statistics shows that the largest portion of the students (70.9%) earned in between 5,001 to 10,000 Tk. every month whereas 55.1% of the students used both the feature or basic phone and smartphone. The complete demographic profile of the students are shown in the below table (Table-1).

Reliability Testing
To test the reliability or internal consistency of the collected data, the researcher measured the Cronbach's Alpha value which is a frequently used technique (Rahim et al., 2016). Cronbach's Alpha for six independent and one dependent variables were found 0.732 which is acceptable, as minimum accepted threshold value suggested by Nunnally (1978) and Hair, Anderson, Tatham & Black (2010) is 0.70 and 0.60 respectively. The reliability statistics are shown in the below table (Table-2).

Relationships among the Influencing Factors with Purchase Intention of Cellular Phone
The model summary table (Table-3) shows that the value of R is 0.694 which indicates a high degree of correlation among the variables under this study. The R 2 value 0.482 indicates that 48.2% of the total variation in the cellular phone purchase intention can be explained by the all independent variables namely product price, product feature, brand name, social influence, ease of use, and promotion of the brand.  -4) suggests that the regression model predicts this study's dependent variable significantly well. As the p value (0.000) is less than 0.05, it indicates the statistical significance of the regression model run by the researcher and statistically, the regression model significantly predicts this study's outcome variable.   (Table-5) the researcher accepts hypotheses H1, H2, H3 and H4 as the significance level of these factors is less than 0.05; and rejects hypotheses H5 and H6 as the level of significance of these factors is greater than 0.05. The factor product price (0.000), product feature (0.000), brand name (0.003) and social influence (0.016) have strong impact on university students' cellular phone purchase intention. But the factor ease of use (0.810) and promotion of the brand (0.581) has no significant impact on the university students' purchase intention of cellular phone.

Discussions
As the young students makes up one of the main segment of cellular phone market, thus the researcher wants to identify the factors that affect university students purchase intention of cellular phone. Prior studies found that product price affect purchase intention of cellular phone (Karjaluoto et al., 2005;Munnuka, 2005;Uddin et al., 2015). This study also confirmed that product price has significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention and thus hypothesis H1 is supported. The study also found product feature's significant influence on university students' cellular phone purchase intention and hence supported hypothesis H2. This result is consistent with some other previous research (e.g. Karjaluoto et al., 2005, Lay-Yee et al., 2013Uddin et al., 2015;Rahim et al., 2016). In case of brand name, young consumers are found brand conscious. The finding of the study revealed that brand name of cellular phone affects young students' intention to purchase, therefore hypothesis H3 is supported. This finding is also supported by some other previous studies (Lay-Yee et al., 2013;Suki, 2013;Rahim et al., 2016). As the university students influence other fellow students and are influenced by them also, this study found that social influence significantly affects university students' cellular phone purchase intention. Thus hypothesis H4 is supported. Similar findings were revealed by prior studies (Lay-Yee et al., 2013;Suki, 2013;Uddin et al., 2015;Rahim et al., 2016). Although previous studies (Park and Chen, 2007;Joo and Sang, 2013;Kim, Chun and Lee, 2014;Uddin et al., 2015) found that ease of use or operate has significant influence on consumers' cellular phone purchase intention, but this study found ease of use did not have a significant impact on intention to purchase cellular phone among university students. Therefore hypothesis H5 is rejected. Even though study conducted by Duarte and Raposo (2010), Chi et al., (2011), Uddin et al., (2015 confirmed that promotion of the brand in different forms like advertising, celebrity endorsement, TV commercials etc. can significantly affect consumers cellular phone purchase intention, but this study did not found any significant impact of promotion of the brand on university students' cellular phone purchase intention. Hence hypothesis H6 is also rejected.

Managerial Implications and Recommendations
We can't imagine a single day without mobile phone and mobile phones have become a part and parcel of our daily life (Smura et al., 2009;Sata, 2013). Popularity of different types of cellular phones is increasing at all levels, as the users get connected with their family and friends by using different social networking sites (Suki & Suki, 2013), especially among the students of college and university (Suki, 2013;Falayi & Adedokun, 2014). For these reasons, cell phone manufacturers and marketers should pay careful attention to the growing young student segments. This study identified number of factors such as product price, product feature, brand name and social influence that have profound influence on students' cell phone purchase intention. So producers and marketers should carefully set the mobile phone price so that they can attract this growing segment. Besides, in order to create a superior brand image and value, they should emphasize on the innovative product features that met the young students changing requirements and reinforce these attributes through promotional means like advertisement. This study also provides important insights for the academicians, marketers and marketing researchers.