Influence of marketing mix on consumer brand preference

Abstract

Kenya’s smartphone market is growing very fast, changing with the global trends in the industry. The market has become a battle field of marketing activities by brands such as Samsung, IDEOS, LG, HTC among others. In this survey, the influence of the marketing mix (the 4 Ps) on consumer brand preference on the smartphones among students in public universities within the Nairobi Central Business District (NCBD) was assessed. This study investigated the basic brand attributes that lead to preference, at the same time how brand preference is influenced by product, price, place, and promotion in the case of smart phones. The specific objectives included: to determine the influence of product mix on consumer brand preference of smartphones among Public University students in Nairobi, to establish the influence of pricing strategies on consumer brand preference of smartphones , to identify the influence of distribution on consumer brand preference of the smart phones , and finally to determine the influence of the different promotion mix on consumer brand preference of smartphones. The study used a sample of 60 students from three public universities within NCBD. The students were purposively selected from different classes to ensure full representation of the different levels and study specializations. A standard structured questionnaire was administered students face to face in the three universities for data collection. Results showed that students are motivated by both the features, and the brand origin of the smart phone. Further, the results show Google’s android operating system was the most preferred operating (OS) system amongst the youth as compared to Apple’s OS and Black Berry OS. This confirmed the Huawei IDEOS based on android as the leading smartphone amongst the sampled population.