Applying Kansei Engineering method on investigating mobile phones' brand image amongst Iranian young designers

Abstract
In marketing mix, mental image of a company among different target groups and their emotional responses toward brands, play an important role. Corporate awareness of their brand image among potential and actual audiences in the market, is a valuable input that reveals the compliance rates of their branding strategies and the real facts in the market. This can help companies to define organizational perspectives and strategic plans and draw new horizons for their short term and long term activities. With this in mind, the aim of this research is to investigate the brand image of top-selling mobile phone manufacturers amongst a group of young design students in the telecommunication sector of Iranian local market. Iranian population constitutes one of the youngest countries in the world; on the other hand the young designers are generally considered as ICT-savvy individuals that steer the market inclinations. Therefore, this segment of users has been selected as the target group. To achieve the aim of this study, the Kansei Engineering method is utilized for verbalizing the associated qualities of the brand images. This method is a practical and useful tool for extracting and evaluating psychological reactions and emotional responses toward a specific brand. To find customer's perception of brand images, six brands were chosen respectively as followed in alphabetical order: Apple, HTC, LG, Nokia, Samsung and Sony. According to their relevance for brand characteristics, 30 Kansei pair-words have been selected. One hundred Design university students (fifty boys and fifty girls) aged between 18-30 years old participated in the study. Each participant separately filled series of questionnaires regarding each brand which given them randomly. In order to analyze the obtained data, factor analysis method has been used to find the internal relation between the image and the aforementioned Kansei words which are corresponding to psychological mapping of the subject mindset towards these brands. The results of this study showed that in Iran's mobile phone's market, there is meaningful difference in brand images among boys and girls. Using Kansei Engineering and the 5-points Semantic Differentiation methods, revealed these differences well. On the other hand, it was found that brands with specific and planned strategies in market, have more sustainable and identical brand image among boys and girls. From strategic point of view, this study indicated the typical strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats ahead of studied brands. Also it exposed some tips and hints for these brands for empowering their brand images in the market. So, the outcomes of this survey could be used by all six studied brands for developing strategies, new products, marketing campaigns and market segmentation projects at the near future. At the future, this research could be done for broader target groups in Iran's mobile phone market for extracting the same data and results. Also the same studies could be arranged in further markets such as home appliances, computer products, audio and video products, home furniture, etc. for analyzing the brand image of active companies in mentioned markets.