Summary of all three focus groups

In this chapter we will compare all three focus groups and make connections to the research questions of this thesis. Strongest themes and how these are supported by the participants can be found from the below table 16:

Most important themes Average Group 1 Group 2 Group 3

Brand origin = Corporate home country/ Country of design 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Country of manufacture = Country where the product is produced 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Majority of smartphones are manufactured in China/Asia 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Asian brands are often seen as Asian not from a specific country 82 % 100 % 50 % 100 %

Country of manufacture not important 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 %

Operating system most important factor affecting purchase

decision 27 % 50 % 0 % 33 %

Finnish (domestic) brand origin clear advantage 72 % 50 % 100 % 66 % Brand origin must have reputation with smartphones 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 %

Good country image = Good brand image 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 %

Brand loyalty important factor affecting purchase decision 82 % 75 % 75 % 100 % Brand origin important to the image of the brand 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 % Brand origin important to actual purchase decision moment 27 % 25 % 50 % 0 % Brand origin is more important for more complicated products 100 % 100 % 100 % 100 %

Best country of origin = Finland 82 % 50 % 100 % 66 %

(Table 16: Summary of the most important themes)

The percentages for the groups in table 16 have been calculated by counting the participants who support these themes by the total number of participants in the groups.

For example 2 out of 4 participants thought that operating system is the most important factor affecting purchase decision and therefore 2/4*100 = 50%. The average is calculated by participants from all groups supporting the theme and divided by total number of participants. For example 3 out of 11 participants thought that operating system is the most important factor affecting purchase decision, so 3/11*100 = 27%. It should be noted

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that these themes give a feeling that participants opinions were either yes or no, and this is due to the nature of the focus groups. Discussions usually ended up, so that people either agreed or disagreed with each other and the final opinions were either for or against type with not much variation in between.

Firstly all participants for all focus groups agreed that brand origin and country of manufacture are two different concepts. The major agreement was also that majority of smartphones regardless of a brand are produced in Asia and within Asia most of them are product in China. Gives good grounds to answer one of the sub-research questions that is

“How do consumers perceive country of origin vs. country of manufacture?” Common agreement was also that brand origin of a smartphone and products in general is the country where the company is registered. It was also thought that is the place where products are designed and the corporate home office is located.

For research questions “how does brand’s country of origin affect consumer’s perception of the brand”, one important notion is that 8 out of 11 participants considered domestic origin (all participants were Finnish) to be an advantage for a brand. However, not all participants were aware that there are Finnish options available for example Jolla. Also many of the participants had changed their smartphone brand even before Nokia phones were sold to Microsoft. In general participants had a lot of opinion about different brand origin’s and there were some that all participants thought highly of in general. Such origins were Finland, Germany, Japan and USA. It was also agreed commonly that some countries are especially good and associated with certain products such are Japanese electronics and German cars. Asia was acknowledged to be good at manufacturing products, but majority thought that most of the products manufactured there are designed somewhere else with Japan as an exception. Participants in general knew more smartphone brands than they could associate with a certain brand origin. Many of the brands originating from Asia were said to come from “somewhere” in Asia and participants might not be able to name the exact country or would name it wrong. This would indicate that continental origin is in some cases more important factor than country of origin.

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The most common brand origins’ named were Korea, Taiwan and USA. Almost all of the participants showed tendency of having stereotypes about some origins being good and some bad. Usually, if a country was known to be good at producing smartphones, then all brands coming from there were though more highly of. This also worked in a negative way, that if a country was not acknowledged as a good smartphone or electronics producers, then brands’ coming from there were not thought to be good. This shows that people acknowledge and know about countries being specialized in certain products. Then there are some countries as mentioned before that are thought to be good at producing almost everything. This would indicate that countries itself have brands that heavily correlate with the brands coming from that particular country. Good country image was noticed to result in a good brand image in general for all product categories and all of the participants thought that in order for a smartphone brand to be a viable option, it should come from a country of origin that is already associated with smartphones.

When participants discussed brand origin’s effect on their purchase decisions, most of them said that it does not have a major impact on the decision itself. The most common factors affecting purchase decision were noticed to be price to quality, brand loyalty, operating system and recommendations from others. Out of these, brand loyalty might have initially been affected by country of origin, but none of the participants made that notion. In all focus groups it was noticed that when they discuss aspects relating to their smartphones as well as other products, they might think that they want to buy a product from a certain country or one that has been ethically produced or any number of intangible aspects relating to the product at hand. But all participants also thought that as the actual purchase decision approaches, these intangible aspects become less and less important and more tangible factors takeover such as price and appearance. This would mean that in the purchase process less appealing brand origin might mean that the product does not advance in evaluation, but in the end when there are several options and the actual purchase decision is at hand its weight becomes more meaningless. Participants were noticed to justify their own choices of brands during the focus groups with the brand origin and other intangible factors and this would indicate that the value of brand origin again increases post purchase decision.

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Background and demographic factors of participants seem to have relatively low impact on their behavior compared to others. Older participants seemed to be more conservative with their decisions as can be expected. They also seemed to be more suspicious towards the newly industrialized brand origins such as China. They were the strongest supporter of the domestic Finnish origin and their purchase decisions were most affected by the brand origin at the actual moment of purchase decision. Gender seemed to have more impact on the opinions and actions than age. Female participants seemed to be impacted more by intangible factors both in terms of brand image and purchase decision. Female participants were also more affected by the opinions of others. In general it was noticed that brand image affected more female participants than male participants. Male participants concentrated more on the tangible factors such as operating system, hardware and price when they evaluated products and pondered the purchase process.

5 Discussions and conclusions

This chapter will discuss and make theoretical conclusions based on the empirical research and discusses these in relation with the previous studies and literature. This is followed by managerial implications. Final part of the research will be discussion regarding the limitations of the study and recommendations for future research.