Factors affecting young customers’ smartphone purchase intention during Covid-19 pandemic()

Purchase intention has become a critical issue to the marketers of smartphones as the market has become very competitive, volatile, uncertain and dynamic during Covid-19 than ever before. For sustaining in the competitive market, every marketer is trying to upgrade its product appearance, product quality, service quality, attractive features, and latest version of software as a whole. This study has investigated the effects of product features, brand image, product price, and social influences on young customers' purchase intention of smartphone during this Covid-19 pandemic time. Survey was conducted using structured questionnaire by collecting data from 305 respondents by using convenience sampling technique. Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) integrated with AMOS was employed for data analysis. Cronbach's alpha, composite reliability and average variance extracted (AVE) were used to test the reliability and validity of the collected data while hypotheses were tested by using Structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings of the study shows that, there is a significant effect of product features, brand image, and product price on purchase intention of a smartphone but social influences has no significant impact on young customers' purchase intention. The study results will help the smartphone marketers to redesign their pandemic and post pandemic segmenting, targeting, differentiation and positioning strategies. Practical and managerial implications along with the future research directions have been discussed at the end of this paper also.