KUALA LUMPUR:MALAYSIANS are increasingly conscious and deliberate about their smartphone research, with a recent survey by Google and Ipsos highlighting that 46 per cent of them fell under the ‘avid researcher’ consumer profile.
Google Malaysia industry head for tech and telco Su Ann Lim said this was due to the innovation in the smartphone industry and greater access to information.
‘Online research is arguably the most important part of the purchase journey and where Malaysian consumers spend the most time on. But once all the factors are weighted and considered, there is still room for retail sales to play a part,’ she told a media briefing after revealing the results of the survey.
She said Malaysians in the market for a smartphone would perform many research actions before purchasing, such as reading smartphone reviews, physically going to a store, comparing prices online and watching smartphone review videos.
When making decisions, Lim said, phone factors were becoming more important than price points, which included battery life, operating system and internal specifications.
Besides being avid researchers, the other top archetypes that made up 78 per cent of the 929 Malaysians surveyed were the ‘brand loyalist’ at 22 per cent and the ‘in-store decider’ at 10 per cent.
Lim said rural consumers were increasingly empowered by the rise of e-commerce as it helped give more choices to this segment, resulting in more rural consumers buying smartphones online compared with urban consumers.
‘One out of four smartphones is bought online today in Malaysia. According to our study, 27 per cent of rural dwellers bought their smartphones online in the past three months compared with 23 per cent of urban dwellers in the same period.’
The study also found that while the majority of Malaysians hold on to their smartphones for longer than two years, one in two Malaysians aspired to change their phones in under two years.
Ipsos, a global market research and consulting firm, is headquartered in Paris, France.-Bernama