Abstract:

The smartphone industry has grown in the last decade and now consists of a variety of vendors, many of whom people are not aware of. There has also been a shift in power from brands such as Nokia, Sony, and Blackberry, to brands such as Apple, Samsung, and Huawei. As such, it has become increasingly important to differentiate brands as technology has become democratised. This paper aims to provide a method for smartphone vendors to differentiate themselves in a crowded and competitive market. The differentiating factor considered is social media, which could be used to reach a high number of individuals to whom could be marketed, and would, ideally, become advocates of the brand. This study hypothesised that reaching a point of brand advocacy relies on four other factors, namely perceived usefulness of social media, anticipated benefits of social media sites, intention to be involved in social media sites, and commitment to social media sites. To test this hypothesis, a sample size of 512 Millennial students were taken from various universities. The data showed that reaching advocacy does indeed rely on the four factors as hypothesised and that, therefore, advocacy among Millennials is a five-factor model whereby perceived usefulness, anticipated benefits and intention to be involved are mediated to advocacy intention through commitment. As such, organisations, especially smartphone brands should focus on the four factors preceding advocacy to enable customers and social media followers to become more prolific in their word of mouth campaigns. Advocacy entails defending the brand, speaking well of the brand, and trying to convince others to buy the brand. Moreover, where customers become advocates, they are more difficult to persuade to use other brands and forgive brands more easily for their mistakes. This is deemed to be a crucial aspect of the saturated globalised smartphone market.

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