Are Smartphone Sales Facilitated by the Word of Mouth?

This research examines whether Smartphone sales are facilitated by the Word of Mouth. It explores the influence of word of mouth on consumer behavior for Smartphone brands and the potential benefits for business organizations.

Running head: ARE SMARTPHONE SALES FACILITATED BY THE WORD OF MOUTH
Are Smartphone Sales Facilitated by the Word of Mouth?
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note

1ARE SMARTPHONE SALES FACILITATED BY THE WORD OF MOUTH
Abstract
In word of mouth promotion or marketing the users of a particular product brand share their
experience with their family members, relatives, friends, co-workers and even neighbours.
The theory of strategic business marketing defines that the word of mouth implies the
improved brand reputation when an existing user recommends another potential user to use a
particular product or brand. Therefore the aim of this research is to examine whether
Smartphone sales are facilitated by the Word of Mouth. The focus of this research is both on
the influence of word of mouth on the consumer behaviour for Smartphone brands and the
potentiality of getting benefited from this strategy from the perspective of any Smartphone
brand or business organisation.
Total 100 responses were chosen randomly to conduct the survey for collecting primary data.
The analysis methodology of this research is based on a mixed approach, where the primary
data collected from the survey have been analysed numerically and the supportive secondary
data collected from literature review have been analysis by qualitative method. The
quantitative data analysis of this study is based on the descriptive statistical analysisas well as
the Pearson’s correlation analysis. For quantitative analysis the SPSS version 2.0 data
analysis software has been use.
It has been found from the primary or field based results that youth population is more
dependent on the electronic word of mouth rather than conventional face to face review
sharing. Therefore, a confident brand can increase their sales through allowing more users to
share their review through online platforms such as social media.

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Table of Content
Chapter1: Introduction...............................................................................................................4
1.1 Background......................................................................................................................4
1.2 Problem Statement...........................................................................................................5
1.3 Research Aims Objectives...................................................................................................6
1.4 Rationale and significance...............................................................................................6
1.5 Research Structure...........................................................................................................7
Chapter 2: Literature Review ....................................................................................................8
2.1 Introduction......................................................................................................................8
2.2 Word of mouth.................................................................................................................9
2.3 Consumer behaviour in Smartphone purchasing...........................................................10
2.4 Other effective promotional strategies to stimulate sales..............................................12
2.5 Modernisation and further evolution of Word of Mouth...............................................13
2.6 Summary........................................................................................................................16
Chapter 3: Methodology .........................................................................................................17
3.1 Introduction....................................................................................................................17
3.2 Research philosophy......................................................................................................17
3.3 Research Approach........................................................................................................18
3.4 Research design..............................................................................................................18
3.5 Data collection process..................................................................................................19
3.5.1 Primary data collection...........................................................................................19

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3.5.2 Secondary data collection.......................................................................................20
3.6 Population and sampling............................................................................................20
3.7 Data analysis techniques................................................................................................21
3.8 Ethical consideration......................................................................................................22
3.9 Summary........................................................................................................................23
Chapter 4: Data analysis and Findings.....................................................................................23
4.2Quantitative data analysis for survey..............................................................................25
4.3 Findings and discussion.................................................................................................31
Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendation ..........................................................................33
5.1 Conclusion......................................................................................................................33
5.2 Linking with objectives..................................................................................................33
5.3 Recommendation............................................................................................................34
5.4 Limitation and future scope...........................................................................................35
References:...............................................................................................................................36
Appendices...............................................................................................................................38
Appendix: Survey Questionnaire.........................................................................................38

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Chapter1: Introduction 2000
1.1 Background
Word of mouth is one of the most strategic and powerful marketing method. In
strategic business marketing the word of mouth implies the improved brand reputation when
an existing user recommends another potential user to use a particular product or brand
(Berger, 2014). Smartphone industry is on the other hand one of the major part of electronics
industry that needs effective marketing or promotional strategy. Word of mouth is a In word
of mouth promotion or marketing the users of a particular product brand share their
experience with their family members, relatives, friends, co-workers and even neighbours.
Surprisingly, this experience sharing triggers the socio-cognitive psychology which further
develops trust. From the business aspect word of mouth has a significant strategic advantage
(Berendt, Uhrich & Thompson, 2018). The strategic advantage of word of mouth strategy is
that it does not cost any extra expanse from the business organisation. However, to maintain a
good reputation in consumer filed the customer relation has to be stronger, that costs very
little when it comes to having a huge amount of profit from sales. With the evolution towards
digital lifestyle the definition of world of mouth has been also changed to some extent. In this
digitalised era where almost all people who have access to electronic devices are heavily
involved in social media based information sharing, the preference of using a particular brand
is also spread easily across the globe. Nowadays, how consumers interact with each other has
massively changed, due to the vast change in technology and wide spread of the internet that
facilitates to consumers to share consumption-related advice by getting engaged in online
activities.
It is not just consumer products that are highly pleased customers recommend; they
are quotes holders for B2B companies. Mental construction and up-to-date memoirs for

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clients are important components for creating favourable phrases. It has also been discovered
to form your mind and to build social ties with potential customers, thanks to an increasingly
small publicity consumption, mixing mobile tours, promotional deals on the estate with gifts
and marketing. Thus the internet brought up a less personal source of communication yet a
universal one called electronic word of mouth. In this era word of mouth could affect a
business reputation in positive as well as negative way. A positive feedback through word of
mouth can easily sprayed across the globe making a huge number of potential customers
interested to purchase a particular brand. On the other hand, a negative feedback either by
user experience or by social media based negative marketing can also be spread first across
the globe reducing a significant number of existing customers, who are planning to purchase
a product of a particular brand. Therefore, word of mouth is very strategic as well as very
risky tool to be used for brand imaging. When it comes to electronics brand, according to
Chen & Ann (2016), only 65% user experience sharing through online platform are being
done regarding the electronics brands and their quality. In this situation as an electronics
product Smartphone may have higher dependency on word of mouth.
1.2 Problem Statement
As discussed in the background word of mouth is one of the most effective business
strategies, which can also increase the risk as well. However, how it could be effective or
risky is transparent for electronics industry, because of several available research papers on
this very topic. On the other hand, there are very few researches on the effectiveness of word
of mouth for smartphone brand. As a result both business organisations and consumers are
anticipating a double-standard impact of this emerging business strategy when it comes to the

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Smartphone business. On the other hand with the enhancement of globalisation in almost all
Smartphone brands the competition level also left the regional or state level and reached the
international level. With international level of competition, a new strategy is highly
acclaimed in an business industry, especially in Smartphone manufacturing industry. This is
why the marketing strategies and the Smartphone brands are two essential part of this
research. In this situation a research on this topic would be very helpful for any business as
well as the potential consumer to realise the theoretical as well as the practical effectiveness
of word of mouth for Smartphone brands.
1.3 Research Aims Objectives
As discussed earlier the problem is currently highly emerged in unknown facts about
word of mouth and its effectiveness in the marketing as well as purchasing behaviour for
Smartphone brands. Therefore the aim of this research is to examine whether Smartphone
sales are facilitated by the Word of Mouth. Hence the focus of this research is both on the
influence of word of mouth on the consumer behaviour for Smartphone brands and the
potentiality of getting benefited from this strategy from the perspective of any Smartphone
brand or business organisation. For this, the research further aimed at the finding the next
possible effective solution for utilising word of mouth marketing strategy for the benefit of
the business in a long run.
According to the aim of this research the following objectives are developed where
each of the following objectives acts as a milestone:
 To explore the practical evidences of utilisation and effectiveness word-of-mouth
 To examine the effectiveness of word-of-mouth on the Smartphone sales
 To find out strategic implication word of mouth as a marketing tool for Smartphone
brands

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1.4 Rationale and significance
Currently, almost all the brands of electronic devices, especially Smartphone brands
are using social media and other digital platform based promotional method as a major
marketing tool (Elseidi & El-Baz, 2016). At the same time, the implication of digitalised
word-of-mouth cannot be neglected. However, some confusion is still distorted the picture
that can signifies the validity of word of mouth strategy over the other indirect marketing and
promotional strategies. Specially for Smartphone sale the effectiveness of word-of-mouth in
terms of conventional process as well as using digital platform, is still not clear because of
very limited number of research on this topic. Very few researches have been done on the
effectiveness of word of mouth to influence sales margin of Smartphone brands. As a result,
the relationship between these two factors and the underlying factors that are acting to
formulate the outcomes are still unknown. Hence this research will help to understand
whether there is any significant interrelation between word of mouth and the sales margin of
Smartphone. After having clear perception, it could be recommended if word of mouth could
be used as major marketing and promotional strategy to increase the sales unit of Smartphone
brands.
1.5 Research Structure
This research or this final draft of the dissertation contains mainly 5 sections namely
Introduction, Literature review, Methodology, Analytic Results and conclusion. This
introduction section discusses the purpose and rationale of this research. In the next section
the secondary data collected from the litterateur review will be presented in thematic format.
After literature review the methodology of this research mentioning the instrument, research
strategy will be discussed. After the methodology section the data analysis and findings will
be presented followed by the discussion section. The fifth and the most important part of this
research is the conclusion where the research will show the final verdict or outcome of this

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research with primary and secondary evidences. In the following diagram this sep by step
procedures are presented.
Chapter 2: Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
The purpose of this literature review is to collect the secondary data from various
secondary resources such as article, journal, books, news reports, industry reports, marketing
researches and others. The literature could be done in systematic review, thematic review,
narrative presentation and other types of secondary data review styles. However, the literature
review has been done in this section with the help of thematic presentation. At first the
secondary resources was collected and the data was sorted based on the subtopics. These
subtopics were marked as the themes. On the basis of these emerging themes the following
literature review has been developed for this dissertation paper. In this brief literature review
the major themes are the word of mouth, consumer behaviour while purchasing Smartphone,
Evolution of word of mouth strategy and other promotional activities except word of mouth
to increase sales. The aim of this literature review is to collect relevant secondary data based
Chapter1Chapter2Chapter3Chapter4Chapter5

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on the objectives on this research. This literature review section also consists of the literature
gap that is presented at the end of this literature review section.
2.2 Word of mouth
In word of mouth promotion or marketing the users of a particular product brand
share their experience with their family members, relatives, friends, co-workers and even
neighbours. Surprisingly, this experience sharing triggers the socio-cognitive psychology
which further develops trust. People, who receive more positive information through their
regular life communication, show more interest of using that product. Word of mouth can be
indirectly stimulated through specific promotional activities where consumers can be more
emotionally bounded (Berger, 2014). Sponsoring social event, social media based marketing
can also influence the word of mouth to some extent. With the evolution towards digital
lifestyle the definition of world of mouth has been also changed to some extent. In this
digitalised era where almost all people who have access to electronic devices are heavily
involved in social media based information sharing, the preference of using a particular brand
is also spread easily across the globe. According to King, Racherla and Bush (2014), this
phenomenon is also known as social media feedback based marketing. Considering the
theoretical concept of word of mouth, this social media based recommendation is also
considered as a modernised method of Word-of-Mouth.
Any organisation that can encourage individuals to share data on a item, trigger or
company can market word-of-mouth. It is helpful both in profit and in non-profit activities
such as political campaigns. For example, a business that manages apartments can encourage
locals to take their buddies and relatives back to the business if they are present on the ground
to stay. If a person refers to the Management Corporation enters a fresh lease, the business
can offer encouragement for these references by providing the owners a money reward or

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another gain (Chen & Ann, 2016). Word-of-mouth is also a common medical method used to
communicate clients among various experts. A doctor might suggest a certain dental
procedure for nurses just as this can introduce clients to experts such as orthodontists and oral
surgeons. Often this is focused on the current networks of physicians and dentists and the
notoriety of each practitioner. In particular, political campaigns rely on word of mouth. They
also promote people to speak to others about doing the same thing besides persuading people
to register for one specific applicant or problem (Faustine, 2015). This is often done by
offering material to individuals such as e-mail newsletters, internet photos and social
networking sites. The strategic advantage of word of mouth strategy is that it does not cost
any extra expanse from the business organisation. However, to maintain a good reputation in
consumer filed the customer relation has to be stronger, that costs very little when it comes to
having a huge amount of profit from sales. With the evolution towards digital lifestyle the
definition of world of mouth has been also changed to some extent. In this digitalised era
where almost all people who have access to electronic devices are heavily involved in social
media based information sharing, the preference of using a particular brand is also spread
easily across the globe.
From the business aspect word of mouth has a significant strategic advantage. The
strategic advantage of word of mouth strategy is that it does not cost any extra expanse from
the business organisation. However, to maintain a good reputation in consumer filed the
customer relation has to be stronger, that costs very little when it comes to having a huge
amount of profit from sales. On the contrary, the limitation of word of mouth strategy is that
it can act against the business as well. According to Wilson, Giebelhausen and Brady (2017),
A bad consumer experience could also be spread very fast while making huge reduction of
brand reputation as well. Hence, to maintain the effective benefit from word of mouth a brand
also needs to focus on resultant experiences of the users. Nowadays, how consumers interact

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with each other has massively changed, due to the vast change in technology and wide spread
of the internet that facilitates to consumers to share consumption-related advice by getting
engaged in online activities (King, Racherla & Bush, 2014). Thus the internet brought up a
less personal source of communication yet a universal one called electronic word of mouth
2.3 Consumer behaviour in Smartphone purchasing
Consumer behaviour is a significant consideration for measuring the potential
business growth. The consumer behaviour depends on some external influences and some
internal influences as well. External influences are perceiving promotional advertisements,
gathering feedback about a brand and others. The internal influences are the customer needs
and expectations (Elseidi & El-Baz, 2016). At the same time the previous experience of a
customer also influences their behaviour on a particular product of brand. For choosing a
Smartphone brands the basic needs of a consumer could be the technological features of a
particular product such as the camera quality, the screen resolution, memory and processing
power. On the other hand, for choosing a Smartphone brand consumers has some other
expectation regarding the durability, consumer support and others. According to Faustine
(2015), the choice of a consumer can also vary depending on the socio-economic and
demographic background of the customer. On the other hand, from the beginning of 20th
century the emerging electronic brands has been creating elevated amount of market
compaction, which has been also increasing the urge of using more effecting marketing
strategy to increase brand reputation among existing and potential consumers. Currently the
Samsung, Apple, Xiaomi, Oppo, Vivo, LG, Nokia, are the most popular Smartphone brands.
According to Chen and Ann (2016), in 2012 consumers around the world said they trust
recommendations from friends and family (earned media) above all other forms of
advertising in case of choosing a Smartphone brands. After focusing on the rapid

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improvement in word of mouth Samsung represents a rise of 18% in their sales margin at
2015 (Mostert, Petzer & Weideman, 2016).
Purchasing intention can be considered as one of the major components of consumer
cognitive behaviour that indirectly holds the potential brand image of a particular product.
According to Mostert, Petzer & Weideman (2016), purchase decision of the consumers
regulates the market trends while project the current success level of business governing
online marketing strategy. According to Wilson, Giebelhausen & Brady (2017), mobile now
accounts for 29% of all online transactions globally, and by 2020 it is expected for 80%
percent of the world’s adult population to have Smartphone. With sophisticated technologies
and severe competition between brands we are getting towards what is called global mobile
wallet, as they can be used anywhere in the world both online and in stores. On the other
hand consumer attitude towards a particular brand is another great indicator of consumer
behaviour. According to Babić Rosario et al. (2016), these attitudes are a critical
psychological construct due to their ability in anticipating and influencing behaviour. Hence,
especially for Smartphone brand the power of attitude is reflected in its cognitive responses,
which refer to conscious beliefs or opinions, and affective responses, which are derived from
emotions and feelings about a particular one or a group of Smartphone brand. At the same
time, the Attitude towards a particular brand also defines the consumers' general judgment
and evaluation of a specific brand based on their brand beliefs.
2.4 Other effective promotional strategies to stimulate sales
In business operation some other professional strategies also used to increase brand
recognition and reputation. Still print media based advertisement are sued along with the
satellite based promotional activities. These types of promotional activities are also known
direct promotion, where customer can directly perceive the advertisement through any kind

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of media (Marchand, Hennig-Thurau & Wiertz, 2017). This type of promotional activity
often receives average faith from the target consumer segment, since the target consumer
segment knows that all brands will praise their features and quality to their target consumers.
After utilising these various direct promotional techniques the sponsorship comes into place
that has both direct and psychological impact on the audience as well. Sponsorship is another
effective promotional strategy which has been used from many years (Berendt, Uhrich &
Thompson, 2018). In this promotional activity a brand or the brand owner funds a particular
event or service that is early accessible by the target market segment. As repayment of this
funding the event arranger or service provider needs to advertise the name of the brand.
Through this technique the advertisement also attracts a large segment of audiences in a very
short time. Both promotional and CSR activity are strategically done through this sponsorship
technique.
In this era of digitalisation, online website, social media and other virtual platform
based promotional activities are very common. Recently, promotional activities are also done
as an add-on of free mobile application, where the user can download a free application and
perceive multiple promotional images and videos with hyperlinks (Rese, Schreiber & Baier,
2014). Apart from that, pop up advertisement is another very common online advertisement
method which is also known by pay per click advertisement. In this method the advertiser
brand need to pay for advertisement only when the viewer clicks on that advertisement to
view it. Nowadays online proportioning is also done through online MMO games and online
game retailing stores as well. This type of promotion and marketing activities helps a brand to
execute 2 major business procedures simultaneously namely market research and brand
advertisement. Another advantage of this method is it requires very minimum amount of
workforce, time and monetary explanatory (Wang & Yu, 2017). Any organization that is
able to encourage people to communicate information on an element, cause or enterprise can

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sell word of mouth. In profit and not - for-profit operations, like political campaigns, it is
useful. For instance, an enterprise managing flats can encourage local people to bring their
family members home into the enterprise if they live on the floor. Where a individual relates
to the management company entering a new lease, the company can encourage these
mentions by offering the holders with a cash or other income. A critical psychological
structure is certain behaviors owing to their capacity to anticipate and influence conduct.
Therefore, the strength of approach is expressed particularly with the Smartphone brand in its
cognitive reactions that relate to personal convictions and views and affective answers that
derive from the emotions and sensations about a certain brand or set of smartphones. At the
same moment, the attitude towards a brand also describes the overall assessment of customers
and the assessment of a brand in relation to their brand views.
2.5 Modernisation and further evolution of Word of Mouth
Word of mouth communication has changed massively over the years due to the ever
modernising technologies and new techniques. This evolution of the word of mouth is
making this conventional marketing strategy a more ubiquitous form of communication
called electronics word of mouth. According to Li & Wu (2013), each day the number of
online review based participation and electronic word of mouth based online communication
are increasing rapidly. There are some specific reasons that are provoking the users to share
their experience through online portal instead of verbal face to face communication.
According to Wenming, Xu & Chang (2014), one of the major reason behind increasing rate
of electronic word of mouth based activity from consumer side is the robustness and
flexibility that the online platform are currently giving the global population. Online platform
is now completely able to fetch real time images and videos regarding a particular product
review. This feature is allowing the market consumer to participate in online word of mouth
based activity even with greater involvement than ever before. The study published by

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Mikalef, Giannakos & Pateli (2013), clearly showed that the consumer behaviour are
changing rapidly because of this easily accessible word of mouth media. This literature also
witnessed that creating a better brand image is crucial for directing consumer decision
making process, charging an added premium to the brand, building brand equity, affecting
attitude towards the brand, influencing purchase intention, in addition to establishing an
outstanding competitive advantage and mediating the effect of e-WOM on purchase
intention.
The research also suggests that electronic word of mouth communication is more
influential than the other sources of communication such as advertisement, critique
recommendations and others. It has been already proven that Consumers trust peer consumers
more than companies and are willing to evaluate products and services according to their
experience and personal opinions before decision making. However, nowadays with changes
of technologies the procedure of interacting has been also massively changed that also
renovated the procedure of product evaluation and service accordingly. The study conducted
Ahmad, Vveinhardt & Ahmed (2014), showed that it is increasingly common between
consumers when gathering pre-purchase information to consider online product reviews,
which not only vary in their content, but also in their polarity from positive to negative
comments. Researchers also indicated that comments influences attitude towards the brand,
as the existence of excessively positive comments leads to more desirable attitude toward the
brand, while the presence of negative comments leads to negative influence towards the
brand. Findings also showed that there is a significant positive relationship between the e-
WOM on brand image and purchase intention (Chen and Ann, 2016).
Because of its intrinsic legitimacy, Positive WoM is the most popular type of
marketing. When happy clients inform others how much they like a company, product,
service, brand or activity, each moment they create their suggestion, they bring their

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reputation on track. Others usually know that people who make recommendations cannot
achieve personal confidence by encouraging something (Mikalef, Giannakos & Pateli, 2013).
Forward-thinking businesses will save their pleased clients with the favorable term of tongue
that enables them to invest in programs and procedures that provide even stronger customer
service, stimulate more client interactions and increase product development. The more
businesses can do to explain the excitement they're excited about clients, the more this up-to-
date process will continue. The result is legions of loyalists from brands who would like to
communicate their favorable thoughts (Li & Wu, 2013). Delighted clients, who discover
grounds for talking about products, should aim diligently to obtain a competitive advantage
for intelligent firms.
Companies which constantly listen, use Voice of Customers Initiatives to incorporate
relevant feedback in order to learn about issues, issues that need to be improved and to
engage their customers in meaningful dialogues–these discussions (info and ideas that
otherwise wouldn't become apparent), will provide useful data for best equipped businesses
(Chen and Ann, 2016). Customers are a great cause of fresh concepts for businesses, but only
businesses with brand promotion programs can profit from the mutual view of their clients.
Incremental company for businesses can also contribute to beneficial WoM from clients.
Everyone is familiar with a true life situation in the software industry where a happy client
suggested an item of a software firm to another business (Lee & Cranage, 2014). Customers
of great pleasure are not only recommending consumer products; they are also recipients of
references for B2B businesses. Important elements to create favorable words include building
mental and up-to-date memories for customers. We understand that people depend on each
other for their most valued advice and are well-connected through their social networks.
Adaptive marketers should use social networks to make customers aware and create their
brand legitimacy. A savvy seller should first use untraditional means and activities to evoke

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an immediate reaction and make consumer consciousness relevant before trying to reach a
specific section of individuals via social networking (Giebelhausen & Brady, 2017). With
increasingly low advertising consumption, combining portable visits, promotional offers at
the property, item donations and marketing can all be used to shape your mind and to create
social links with prospective clients.
2.6 Summary
From above literature review it can be concluded that in word of mouth promotion or
marketing the users of a particular product brand share their experience with their family
members, relatives, friends, co-workers and even neighbours. It has been found that as per the
theoretical concept of word of mouth, this social media based recommendation is also
considered as a modernised method of Word-of-Mouth. It has been found from the literature
for choosing a Smartphone brand the choice of a consumer can also vary depending on the
socio-economic and demographic background of the customer and so the effectiveness of
word of mouth could also be changed. In this digitalised era where almost all people who
have access to electronic devices are heavily involved in social media based information
sharing, the preference of using a particular brand is also spread easily across the globe. On
the contrary, the limitation of word of mouth strategy is that it can act against the business as
well. It has been found that Purchasing intention can be considered as one of the major
components of consumer cognitive behaviour that indirectly holds the potential brand image
of a particular product. On the other hand consumer attitude towards a particular brand is
another great indicator of consumer behaviour. From the above literature it has been found
that the consumer behaviour is changing rapidly because of this easily accessible word of
mouth media. Nowadays with changes of technologies the procedure of interacting has been

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also massively changed that also renovated the procedure of product evaluation and service
accordingly. Customers of great pleasure are not only recommending consumer products;
they are also recipients of references for B2B businesses. Important elements to create
favorable words include building mental and up-to-date memories for customers. It has been
also found that with increasingly low advertising consumption, combining portable visits,
promotional offers at the property, item donations and marketing can all be used to shape
your mind and to create social links with prospective clients. The robustness and efficiency of
the internet system for the worldwide public is one of the main reasons behind the growing
frequency of electronic phrase of mouth-based customer interaction. In a specific product
review, the Online Platform can now fully capture real-time pictures and clips. This function
allows business users to engage more than ever in internet phrase of mouth-based activities.
Chapter 3: Methodology
3.1 Introduction
Research method implies the procedure of conducting the research with some
strategic data collection and data analysis tools for formulating the reliable and validate
conclusion. A research methodology has many sections or layers into it. The outer layer
defines the selection of the inner layers. The most outer section is research philosophy
followed by research approach and design respectively. The most inner layer or in other
words the final phase of the research design is data analysis for collected data (Scheurich,
2014). In this section appropriate research methods are discussed considering the research
philosophy, research approach and design. The purpose of this methodology section is to find
appropriate data collection and data analysis tool in accordance with the research objectives

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and the research scopes. Ethical consideration in this research is also presented in this section
with estimated outcome or result of this thesis.
3.2 Research philosophy
Research philosophy refers to the philosophical perception of conducting any
research. The philosophy of any research can be either based on positivism philosophy or
interpretivism philosophy or realism philosophy. Positivism philosophy is based on the
empirical perception, which allows large sample size for data analysis and usage of
qualitative method for formulating the conclusion. The interpretivism philosophy allows in
depth interpretation of collected data, where the number of sources is limited and information
is more non-numeric (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018). The realism philosophy enables
researcher to execute a research based on the experience of sensory organs or real
experiences. Considering the purpose of this research it can be sated that this research needs
to find if there is any practical connection between word of mouth and the consumer
behaviour of choosing Smartphone brands. Hence, this research needs large sample size to
examine the relation and therefore has used the positivism research philosophy.
3.3 Research Approach
The research approach emphasise the approach of achieving the aims of a research,
which also defines the execution process of data analysis. Three types of research approach
are inductive approach, deductive approach and abductive approach. The inductive approach
allows the research to explore a particular topic to find something new in that. The deductive
approach allows deducing any presumption through analysing it validity (Palinkas et al.,
2015). The abductive approach allows abduct a concept from another research and
descriptively presented abducted information. This research aimed to check the validity of the
relation between usage of word of mouth and sales increment of Smartphone brands. Hence,

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this research is deducing something and therefore has proceeded with the deductive research
approach. In other words, the approach of this research has been deductive research approach.
3.4 Research design
The research design is the structure of the research that indicates the research
conducting procedure as well. The basic typologies of research design are based on two
perspectives namely procedural divisions of research design and perceptual divisions of
research design. According to perceptual division research design can be exploratory,
explanatory and descriptive (Yanow & Schwartz-Shea, 2015). Explorative research aims to
explore a particular issue without having any previous variable consideration, while
explanatory research allows explaining the topic through predetermined variables.
Descriptive research describes a concept while presenting the implications as well. This
research aimed to find the connection between word of mouth for Smartphone brands and
change in sales margin. Hence, for explaining the connection between those variable this
research is based on explanatory design. As per the procedural divisions of design this
research has followed the mixed research design where both field based data collection as
well as secondary resource based data collection has been used. It also worth mentioning that
this study is a non experimental cross sectional study, where no particular intervention was
involved to control the output and a large sample size based survey method has been
choosing for data collection.
3.5 Data collection process
3.5.1 Primary data collection
The primary data collection refers to the procedure of collecting data from practical
field by using various data collection tools. Depending on the research design the data
collection tools are usually chosen. Observation on a group of people, laboratory tests,

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interview, survey and other filed based studies are the major tools of primary data collection
(Bernard, 2017). According to the purpose of this research, this research is focused on
collecting data for two major variables namely consumer behaviour towards word of mouth
and sales margin of Smartphone brands. Hence, for this research the primary data collection
has been used to collect the dependency of consumers on the word of mouth while making a
purchasing decision for Smartphone. As the primary data collection method Survey
questionnaire tool has been used. To execute the survey the online based platform has been
used. In this era of digitalisation every day more and more population are increasing their
involvement time with online platform. Therefore collecting data from online survey method
has not reduced the operational cost, but it also has increased the participation of target
population in this study.
3.5.2 Secondary data collection
Secondary data collection method is a method of collecting data from various
secondary resources such as research articles, books, journals and other secondary data
sources (Antwi & Hamza, 2015). In this research the literature review has been used as a
secondary data collection method. For literature review various research articles, books and
other resources on consumer behaviour and word of mouth has been collected. To collect the
industry level information like the brand values of electronics products, marketing strategies
of Smartphone brands, results of utilising the marketing strategies, various researches on
Smartphone brands, published report on organisational progress, annual reports have been
collected.
3.6 Population and sampling
Sampling is a strategy of choosing the samples for the primary data collection. For a
survey based data collection the sampling has been based on the human population. In this
research the target population is the existing and potential consumers of various Smartphone

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brands. The size of the population who was participated in this survey based data collection
was 100. Hence, for this research the sample population is 100 existing and potential
consumers of various Smartphone brands. The sampling strategy is another essential part of
the population selection. Sampling strategy could be probability or non probability sampling.
The non-probability sampling allows a research to select participants in a systematic selection
process, the each participant in the pool of potential participants has different probability of
being selected. However, in probability sampling, which is also called random sampling, is a
method of choosing the participants randomly from the target population (Kumar, 2019). In
this survey the random sampling method was used. Approximately 250 survey responses
were received after distributing the survey questionnaire across social network platforms.
From these responses only 100 responses were chosen randomly and considered as the
collected primary data.
3.7 Data analysis techniques
Data analysis is a major part of any research that allows the researchers to analyse the
collected data to forming the ultimate findings. The data analysis techniques can be
segregated into two different patterns namely qualitative data analysis and quantitative data
analysis. The qualitative data analysis is a method of analysing the non numerical data by
various non numerical procedures, such as thematic analysis, contextual analysis, narrative
analysis, concept mapping and others (Bell, Bryman & Harley, 2018). The quantitative
analysis is a process of analysing the data through numerical analysis such as statistical or
mathematical analysis. The analysis methodology of this research is based on a mixed
approach, where the primary data collected from the survey have been analysed numerically
and the supportive secondary data collected from literature review have been analysis by
qualitative method.

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For literature review based qualitative data analysis the thematic data analysis has
been used. The themes have been selected form emerging concepts from most of the
literatures and considering the additional attributes of the main research. The thematic
process of qualitative analysis allowed this data to segregate the information collected from
secondary resources while presenting them in a sequential structure. It is worth mentioning
that themes have been chosen manually without using any external qualitative analysis
software applications.
The quantitative data analysis of this study is based on the descriptive statistical
analysis considering the percentage distribution of frequency, specifically for demographical
analysis. Apart from that, the interconnection between the various variables with the tendency
of being influenced by the word of mouth has been analysed by the Pearson’s correlation
analysis. The, two tailed, value or r –value has been considered to ensure that the correlation
value between to projected variables is significant enough. For this analysis the SPSS version
2.0 data analysis software has been use. The descriptive data has been also presented in
graphical representation through using MS-Excel based graphical representation method has
been used to visually present the data trends.
3.8 Ethical consideration
The ethical consideration is one of the most significant considerations of a research
that implies the validity and reliability of the data collection process. The ethical
consideration of this research is focused on the primary data collection process. The ethical
concern of this study is divided into two sections namely the privacy of the data and the
willingness of the target participants. The survey based data collection process ensured that
the data collection process would not violate the data protection regulation, which is also
known as the data privacy and protection act, 2011 (Hair et al., 2015). The survey has been

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conducted after collecting the acknowledgement of each participant. To take the
acknowledgement from the participants an ethical form was presented to each participant
containing the purpose of the research and the assurance of the privacy. The survey has been
conducted after receiving the acknowledgement evidence of the participants on that ethical
form. The raw data have been saved in a secured digital storage system, with authentic access
encryption, that could be accessed by authentic personnel. The personal data of the
participants such as their names, addresses, preferences, online uses have not been disclosed
in this study and will not be used in any other research as well.
3.9 Summary
Since, this research needs large sample size to examine the relation and therefore has
used the positivism research philosophy. At the same time the approach of this research has
been deductive research approach. Additionally it has been found that this research is based
on explanatory design. This study is a non experimental cross sectional study. According to
the purpose of this research, this research is focused on collecting data for two major
variables namely consumer behaviour towards word of mouth and sales margin of
Smartphone brands. This research has used the data collection method from online survey
method. To collect the industry level information like the brand values of electronics
products, marketing strategies of Smartphone brands, results of utilising the marketing
strategies, various researches on Smartphone brands, published report on organisational
progress, annual reports have been collected. In the survey method, the random sampling
method was used. 100 responses were chosen randomly to conduct the survey for collecting
primary data. The analysis methodology of this research is based on a mixed approach, where
the primary data collected from the survey have been analysed numerically and the
supportive secondary data collected from literature review have been analysis by qualitative
method. The quantitative data analysis of this study is based on the descriptive statistical

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analysisas well as the Pearson’s correlation analysis. For quantitative analysis the SPSS
version 2.0 data analysis software has been use. MS-Excel based graphical representation
method has been used to visually present the data trends.
Chapter 4: Data analysis and Findings 3000
In this section the collected data will be analysed and presented. The quantitative data
analysis will be presented initially, and then the result will be discussed by the qualitative
data found from the secondary data sources. In the quantitative data presentation both
descriptive and correlation coefficient analysis have been presented in tabular form. The
written analysis was done after each tabular data presentation. The coding and codebook
generation is also present in this section of dissertation. The findings and discussion section is
based on the quantitative findings from primary results and the supportive evidences from the
literature review.
4.1 Coding and Codebook Generation For analysis
Coding and codebook generation is a process of coding the raw primary data from the
survey results to develop a dataset for further quantitative analysis. The coding section can
only consist of numerical data, where the ordinal and nominal data should be converted into
numerical values. The ordinal options are numbered through weight of the options in
ascending distribution. The following table presents the codebook generations for this study.
Codes of questions Option A
(Code: 1)
Option B
(Code: 2)
Option C
(Code: 3)
Option D
(Code: 4)
Option E
(Code: 5)
Q1 Code: Gender Male Female
Q2 Code: Age 15 to 25 26 to 35 36 to 45 46 to 60 60 +
Q3 Code: Occupation School
student
Collage/
University
Student
Unemployed Service Self
employed
Q4 Code: Purchasing Decision Check online Taking to Consult with Research None of

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reviews friends/
colleagues/
neighbours/
relatives
about their
experience
a tech expert about
technical
features
these
Q5 Code: Influenced by A good
advertisemen
t
A strong
brand
ambassador
Exceptional
reviews
from users
Personal
experience
None of
these
Q6 Code: Reviews I care Reviews
from Friends
Reviews
from
family
members
Reviews
from
neighbours
Reviews
from tech
experts
Online
user
reviews
Q7 Code: Verbal WOM sharing Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always
Q8 Code: Verbal WOM listening Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always
Q9 Code: Online review sharing Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always
Q10 Code: Online review writing Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always
Table: Codebook of Survey
4.2Quantitative data analysis for survey
In the following section the descriptive statistical analysis of demographical data has been
done.
Gender
Frequen
cy Percent
Valid
Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid Male 52 52.0 52.0 52.0
Female 48 48.0 48.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0

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From the above data table on gender of the participants it has been found that the male female
ratio of participants is almost 50-50. However, the male population is slightly larger in female
population among the participants.
Age
Frequenc
y Percent
Valid
Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid 15 to 25 36 36.0 36.0 36.0
26 to 35 28 28.0 28.0 64.0
36 to 45 24 24.0 24.0 88.0
46 to 60 8 8.0 8.0 96.0
60 + 4 4.0 4.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0
From the above data table on Age of the participants it has been found that the age of the
participants varies from 15 to more than 60 years old. However, majority of the participants
or 36% participants are from the age range of 15 to 25 years. On the other hand, 28%
respondents are from the age group 26 to 35 years. Approximately 24% population among
the participants are from 36 to 45 years age group. 8% respondents are from 40 to 60 years
age band, which contributed to a very stipulated amount of participants. The least participants
or only 4% participants are from more than 60 years old.
Occupation
Frequency Percent
Valid
Percent
Cumulati
ve
Percent
Valid School student 24 24.0 24.0 24.0
Collage/
University
Student
24 24.0 24.0 48.0
Unemployed 8 8.0 8.0 56.0

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Service 28 28.0 28.0 84.0
Self employed 16 16.0 16.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0
From the above data table on Occupation of the participants it has been found that the
majority of the participants or 28% participants are working in some kinds of service sectors
or manufacturing plant. In other words, they are working under an employment. On the other
hand, 24% respondents are school students and similarly another 24% participants are
university college students. Approximately 8% population among the participants are
unemployed and the 16% participants are self employed. These demographical details should
be remembered at the interpretation section of the next variables. The following data analysis
will be highly valid for this demographic segment of participants.
Purchasing_Decision
Frequenc
y
Percen
t
Valid
Percent
Cumulati
ve
Percent
Valid Check online
reviews 36 36.0 36.0 36.0
Taking to
friends/
colleagues/
neighbours/
relatives
28 28.0 28.0 64.0
Consult with a
tech expert 12 12.0 12.0 76.0
Research about
technical
features
16 16.0 16.0 92.0
None of these 8 8.0 8.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0

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From the above percentage distribution analysis of survey data is has been found that
36% participants check online reviews before making decision about purchasing a smart-
phone of a particular brand. Around 28% participants supports that they listen to the
experiences reviews shared by their friends, colleagues and others about a particular brand.
12% participant replied that they usually like to consult with a tech expert before purchasing
a smart-phone of a particular brand. Almost 16% participants admitted that they use to
research about technical features by themselves in order to make a decision about purchasing
a smart-phone brand. It can be clearly seen that collectively 64% participants consider word
of mouth before making decision about purchasing a smart-phone of a particular brand.
Influenced_by
Frequenc
y
Percen
t
Valid
Percent
Cumulative
Percent
Valid A good
advertisement 12 12.0 12.0 12.0
A strong
brand
ambassador
20 20.0 20.0 32.0
Exceptional
reviews from
users
32 32.0 32.0 64.0
Personal
experience 24 24.0 24.0 88.0
None of these 12 12.0 12.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0
From the above percentage distribution analysis of survey data is has been found that
32% participants are often influenced by exceptional good or bad reviews from the users of a
particular brand. Around 24% participants are influenced by only their personal user
experience of particular Smartphone bran. 20% participants are influenced by a well known

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celebrity branding strategy. Almost 12% participants admitted that they often become
influenced by a good advertisement on a particular Smartphone brand.
Reviews_I_care
Frequenc
y Percent
Valid
Percen
t
Cumulativ
e Percent
Valid Reviews from
Friends 32 32.0 32.0 32.0
Reviews from
family members 20 20.0 20.0 52.0
Reviews from
neighbours 12 12.0 12.0 64.0
Reviews from
tech experts 12 12.0 12.0 76.0
Online user
reviews 24 24.0 24.0 100.0
Total 100 100.0 100.0
From the above percentage distribution analysis of survey data is has been found that
32% participants prioritise the reviews of their friends on a particular Smartphone brand. 24%
Participants admitted that they prioritise the reviews from the online platform based user
reviews of a particular Smartphone brand. Around 20% participants prioritise the reviews of
family members on a particular Smartphone brand. 12% participant replied that they usually
like to consult with a tech expert before purchasing a smart-phone of a particular brand.
Almost 12% participants admitted that they use to rely on the reviews of neighbours on a
particular Smartphone brand.
Statistics
Verbal_WO
M_sharing
Verbal_WO
M_listening
Online_revie
w_sharing
Online_revie
w_searching
N Valid 100 100 100 100

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Missing 0 0 0 0
Mean 3.31 3.16 3.36 3.60
Median 3.00 3.00 3.00 4.00
Mode 3 4 3a 5
Std. Deviation .918 1.012 1.202 1.363
a. Multiple modes exist. The smallest value is shown
From the above mean value distribution analysis of 4 continuous variable measures of
this survey it has been found that there are some significant difference between the listening
reviews and sharing reviews about Smartphone brands within online platform based and face
to face communication. The online review searching has the mean value of 3.6 and median
value of 4 and mode value of 5 that is highest among other responses. It clearly indicates that
most of the participants have the tendency to search the reviews over internet rather than
engaging in a face to face communication. The mean value of online review sharing is 3.36
which is second highest amongst others that means most of the participants like to share their
experience through the internet rather than face to face experience sharing. In both Verbal
experience sharing and verbal experience listening the scores are comparatively low. This
clearly shows that people uses online platform more as Word of Mouth than the direct face to
face experience sharing.
Correlations
Gender Age Occupation
Gender Pearson Correlation 1 -.102 .052
Sig. (2-tailed) .315 .608
N 100 100 100

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Age Pearson Correlation -.102 1 .775**
Sig. (2-tailed) .315 .000
N 100 100 100
Occupation Pearson Correlation .052 .775** 1
Sig. (2-tailed) .608 .000
N 100 100 100
Verbal_WOM_sharing Pearson Correlation .090 -.792** -.493**
Sig. (2-tailed) .372 .000 .000
N 100 100 100
Verbal_WOM_listenin
g
Pearson Correlation .126 -.838** -.452**
Sig. (2-tailed) .213 .000 .000
N 100 100 100
Online_review_sharin
g
Pearson Correlation .012 -.879** -.597**
Sig. (2-tailed) .905 .000 .000
N 100 100 100
Online_review_search
ing
Pearson Correlation .077 -.932** -.675**
Sig. (2-tailed) .448 .000 .000
N 100 100 100

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**. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed).
From the above correlation analysis both the correlation coefficient and the
significance determinants can be interpreted for data analysis. In this data analysis only the
correlation values that have the two tailed value less than 0.05 will be considered significant.
Hence considering the significant 2 tailed values it has been found that Gender does not have
any significant correlation with any of the Word of Mouth determinants. However Age of the
participants are significantly correlated with all four word of mouth determinants. The
negative value of correlation coefficient indicates that the age is inversely proportional to all
word of mouth determinants. In other words, younger people relies on more word of mouth
than older people.
4.3 Findings and discussion
From the above percentage distribution analysis of survey data is has been found that
a huge amount of participants check online reviews before making decision about purchasing
a smart-phone of a particular brand. Another larger number of participants supports that they
listen to the experiences reviews shared by their friends, colleagues and others about a
particular brand. It can be clearly seen that collectively 64% participants consider word of
mouth before making decision about purchasing a smart-phone of a particular brand. Hence it
can be clearly seen that from the business aspect word of mouth has a significant strategic
advantage. The strategic advantage of word of mouth strategy is that it does not cost any
extra expanse from the business organisation. However, to maintain a good reputation in
consumer filed the customer relation has to be stronger, that costs very little when it comes to
having a huge amount of profit from sales.
From the above percentage distribution analysis of survey data is has been found that
a large number of participants are often influenced by exceptional good or bad reviews from

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the users of a particular brand. Considerably lower number of participants is influenced by
only their personal user experience of particular Smartphone brand. Therefore, it can be
clearly seen that nowadays, how consumers interact with each other has massively changed,
due to the vast change in technology and wide spread of the internet that facilitates to
consumers to share consumption-related advice by getting engaged in online activities.
From the above percentage distribution analysis of survey data is has been found that
a huge number of participants prioritise the reviews of their friends on a particular
Smartphone brand. Another considerable amount of Participants admitted that they prioritise
the reviews from the online platform based user reviews of a particular Smartphone brand.
Those participants prioritise the reviews of family members on a particular Smartphone
brand. Hence it can be interpreted from this result that Word of mouth is a In word of mouth
promotion or marketing the users of a particular product brand share their experience with
their family members, relatives, friends, co-workers and even neighbours. Surprisingly, this
experience sharing triggers the socio-cognitive psychology which further develops trust.
From the business aspect word of mouth has a significant strategic advantage. The strategic
advantage of word of mouth strategy is that it does not cost any extra expanse from the
business organisation. The robustness and efficiency of the internet system for the worldwide
public is one of the main reasons behind the growing frequency of electronic phrase of
mouth-based customer interaction. In a specific product review, the Online Platform can now
fully capture real-time pictures and clips. This function allows business users to engage more
than ever in internet phrase of mouth-based activities.
There are some significant differences between the listening reviews and sharing
reviews about Smartphone brands within online platform based and face to face
communication have been found. The online review searching has the heist than any other
variables. It clearly indicates that most of the participants have the tendency to search the

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reviews over internet rather than engaging in a face to face communication. The mean value
of online review sharing means most of the participants like to share their experience through
the internet rather than face to face experience sharing. In both Verbal experience sharing and
verbal experience listening the scores are comparatively low. This clearly shows that people
uses online platform more as Word of Mouth than the direct face to face experience sharing.
From the literature review it has been already found that Word of mouth communication has
changed massively over the years due to the ever modernising technologies and new
techniques. This evolution of the word of mouth is making this conventional marketing
strategy a more ubiquitous form of communication called electronics word of mouth. From
the correlation analysis it has been found that Gender does not have any significant
correlation with any of the Word of Mouth determinants. However, Age of the participants
are significantly correlated with all four word of mouth determinants. The negative value of
correlation coefficient indicates that the age is inversely proportional to all word of mouth
determinants. In other words, younger people rely on more word of mouth than older people.
Chapter 5: Conclusion and recommendation
5.1 Conclusion
From the research and the discussion it can be concluded that in word of mouth
promotion or marketing the users of a particular product brand share their experience with
their family members, relatives, friends, co-workers and even neighbours. It has been found
that as per the theoretical concept of word of mouth, this social media based recommendation
is also considered as a modernised method of Word-of-Mouth. It has been found from the
research that for choosing a Smartphone brand the choice of a consumer can also vary
depending on the socio-economic and demographic background of the customer and so the

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effectiveness of word of mouth could also be changed. It has been found that There are some
significant differences between the listening reviews and sharing reviews about Smartphone
brands within online platform based and face to face communication have been found. The
online review searching has the heist than any other variables. It clearly indicates that most of
the participants have the tendency to search the reviews over internet rather than engaging in
a face to face communication. From the study it has been found that in this digitalised era
where almost all people who have access to electronic devices are heavily involved in social
media based information sharing, the preference of using a particular brand is also spread
easily across the globe. On the contrary, the limitation of word of mouth strategy is that it
can act against the business as well. Age of the participants are significantly correlated with
all four word of mouth determinants. From the correlation coefficient it has been found that
that the age is inversely proportional to all word of mouth determinants. In other words,
younger people rely on more word of mouth than older people. Some behaviors are a critical
psychological construct owing to their capacity to anticipate and influence behavior.
Therefore, the strength of approach is expressed particularly with the Smartphone brand in its
cognitive reactions that relate to personal convictions and views and affective answers that
derive from the emotions and sensations about a certain brand or set of smartphones. At the
same moment, the attitude towards a brand also describes the overall assessment of customers
and the assessment of a brand in relation to their brand views.
It has been found that Purchasing intention can be considered as one of the major
components of consumer cognitive behaviour that indirectly holds the potential brand image
of a particular product. On the other hand consumer attitude towards a particular brand is
another great indicator of consumer behaviour. From the above literature it has been found
that the consumer behaviour is changing rapidly because of this easily accessible word of
mouth media. It has been also found from this research that with the new set of technologies

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the procedure of interacting has been also massively changed that also renovated the
procedure of product evaluation and service accordingly. The strategic advantage of word of
mouth strategy is that it does not cost any extra expanse from the business organisation.
However, to maintain a good reputation in consumer filed the customer relation has to be
stronger, that costs very little when it comes to having a huge amount of profit from sales.
With the evolution towards digital lifestyle the definition of world of mouth has been also
changed to some extent. In this digitalised era where almost all people who have access to
electronic devices are heavily involved in social media based information sharing, the
preference of using a particular brand is also spread easily across the globe. Customers of
great pleasure are not only recommending consumer products; they are also recipients of
references for B2B businesses. Important elements to create favorable words include building
mental and up-to-date memories for customers. It has been also found that with increasingly
low advertising consumption, combining portable visits, promotional offers at the property,
item donations and marketing can all be used to shape your mind and to create social links
with prospective clients.
5.2 Linking with objectives
In this following section the conclusions found from the results have been linked with
the objectives in order to evaluate how much this research is able to accomplish the declared
milestones or how much the study meet its objectives accordingly. In the following the
section the objectives are presented with the respective outcomes and procedures.
Objectives Procedures and Outcomes
To explore the practical evidences of
utilisation and effectiveness word-of-
From the practical evidences it has been found that word
of mouth can highly influence the purchasing behaviour

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mouth positively as well as negatively. The evidences have been
presented in both literature review and data analysis
section of this research.
To examine the effectiveness of word-of-
mouth on the Smartphone sales
Word of mouth has huge impact on the consumer
behaviour when it comes to making purchasing decision
about Smartphone brand. It has been found that word of
mouth is highly influencing for youth population
especially while choosing a Smartphone brand.
To find out strategic implication word of
mouth as a marketing tool for
Smartphone brands
It has been found from the primary or field based results
that youth population is more dependent on the electronic
word of mouth rather than conventional face to face
review sharing. Therefore, a confident brand can increase
their sales through allowing more users to share their
review through online platforms such as social media.
5.3 Recommendation
From the results and conclusion it can be clearly interpreted that there are some strategic
utilisations of advanced word of mouth to increase the sales of Smartphone brands even
further by influencing the consumer behaviour of target market segment.
The principles of word-of-mouth marketing are simple, so the process of using it should not
attempt to be too complex. There are four steps organizations should take to create a
successful word-of-mouth campaign at the very initial stage.
First, the company should give consumers something to talk about. This means providing a
quality product and highlighting its key features. If, for instance, a new Smartphone brand
called PhoneX broke out and wants to develop a positive reputation in its community,

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company of that brand could start the campaign by asking consumers the question, “What is
your favourite feature and facility in PhoneX?” This begins a specific, product-focused
conversation, rather than just a general discussion of the shop itself.
In the next step, the company should decide where this conversation will happen. The
company should research what media its consumers use the most, and then place the
marketing materials for the campaign in those media. The brand PhoneX could also be trying
to capture the attention of its local community, so it may want to place ads asking “What is
your favorite feature in a Smartphone?” in a community newspaper, on local TV stations, and
through social media pages that pertain to the community.
However, simply starting the conversation often isn't enough. The company needs to give
consumers a reason to talk about the product. The brand PhoneX could direct consumers to
its website to vote for their favourite flavour and promise in the marketing materials to offer a
discount on the most voted-for advanced features.
Lastly, the company needs to make sure the conversation continues. PhoneX may see an
initial rush of customers at the start of the campaign, but it can also let new and potential
customers know that people are talking about the shop. PhoneX could announce the winner
of the Favourite Feature campaign in new marketing materials and use this momentum to
launch a new campaign that encourages people to vote again. This would allow the company
to learn about where the conversation was taking place and what kinds of materials were
most effective.
5.4 Limitation and future scope
As discussed by earlier it is a mixed method based research which is based on
exploring the effectiveness of Word Of Mouth in the sales of Smartphone brands. The
research has utilised the available opportunities to reach its desired aim. It has been found

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that The robustness and efficiency of the internet system for the worldwide public is one of
the main reasons behind the growing frequency of electronic phrase of mouth-based customer
interaction. In a specific product review, the Online Platform can now fully capture real-time
pictures and clips. This function allows business users to engage more than ever in internet
phrase of mouth-based activities. However, there is a major deficiency that can still limit the
viability and reliability of this research. Due to very limited execution time the primary study
was conducted only within the national level. However, to explore the effectiveness of world
of mouth in the sales of Smartphone brand the data should be geographically and socially
more diverse. In further research a larger size of participants should be recruited to minimise
this kind of potential biasness or lack of reliability. On the other hand, because of depending
only a structured questionnaire formats this research is unable to fetch the more detailed and
more in depth perception of the consumers regarding the word of mouth. Therefore in future
a semi structure interview will be used to collect more in depth data in a structured format
that can be easily analysed and interpreted accordingly.

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References:
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45ARE SMARTPHONE SALES FACILITATED BY THE WORD OF MOUTH
Appendices
Appendix: Survey Questionnaire
Option A Option B Option C Option D Option E Response
Q1 Gender Male Female
Q2 Age 15 to 25 26 to 35 36 to 45 46 to 60 60 +
Q3 Current occupation School
student
Collage/
University
Student
Unemployed Service Self
employed
Q4 Before purchasing a
mobile brand I use to
Check online
reviews
Taking to
friends/
colleagues/
neighbours/
relatives
about their
experience
Consult with
a tech expert
Research
about
technical
features
None of
these
Q5 I often become
influenced through
A good
advertisemen
t
A strong
brand
ambassador
Exceptional
reviews
from users
Personal
experience
None of
these
Q6 Reviews that I care
more
Reviews
from Friends
Reviews
from
family
members
Reviews
from
neighbours
Reviews
from tech
experts
Online
user
reviews
Q7 I share my experience
about using
Smartphone brands
verbally with others
Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always
Q8 I listen carefully about
someone experience
about Smartphone
brands
Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always
Q9 I share my experience
about using
Smartphone brands
through online
Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always

46ARE SMARTPHONE SALES FACILITATED BY THE WORD OF MOUTH
platforms
Q1
0
I search online user
shared reviews about
Smartphone brands
Never Rarely Sometimes Frequently Always