Comparing Buying Decision Processes Between Smartphone Consumers - Case Android, iOS and Windows Phone

Abstract

This thesis was carried out with Company X that is a large international technology company. This study discussed smartphone consumers' buying decision processes between three operating systems: Apple iOS, Google Android and Microsoft Windows Phone. In this research, the end users are individual consumers and not the operators or other stakeholders. Operating systems create a certain type of guidelines to the product development and the product, what gives multiple reasons for this focus area. These three operating systems are the most popular globally at the same time the global market is billions of Euros, when it's reasonable to research the smartphone end users. The study's target is to find frequently coming similar factors that are influencing the buying decision process.

The research happened with qualitative interviews and interviewing Finnish university students. The question list was made only for the research and the target group in addition to the theoretical framework. The target of the interviews was getting repetitive factors between the users of different operating systems. The target group of the interviews included 20 Finnish university students whose average was 23 years.

According to the research, almost every student searches actively information about smartphones especially from professional reviews and discussion forums. The biggest factor influencing the buying decision process was the device price because the interviewees were full-time students. Most of the students described the brand having a huge affect and preferring to trust on familiar brands. The target group told that Android's strengths are a big amount of applications, cheap price, and modification while iOS has easy user interface and also the big amount of applications. Windows Phone's strengths were its difference in the user interface compared to others and price-quality rate. All in all, the students are searching information actively beforehand, making their purchase decisions precisely and wanting to have a good run for their money.