In this chapter, I reflect upon the results of the research. The first section (6.1) addresses the societal significance of owning a Smartphone and how it impacts adolescents as consumers in the marketplace.
Following this, I present what managerial implication this can potentially have for companies selling and promoting Smartphones (6.2). Finally, I outline the limitations that are used to inform directions for future
research within this area (6.3).
6.1 Societal Significance
Results of this research show that Smartphone technology has proven to induce both positive and negative influence on human life, based on their nature and use. Adolescents today can easily search for the information they need, stay connected with significant others, and interact with their social networks within multiple societies regardless of their time, place and interests. On the other hand, Smartphones have also yielded several negative influences, including addiction, health-related issues and dissociation. In this context, social needs were found to be one of the crucial factors of adolescent’s dependence on Smartphone, and while the versatility of Smartphones, as well as availability of social networking applications, immediately appear to have a positive influence on behavior, it also carries fundamental changes in how they interact.
People all behave in different manners depending on the context; the way adolescents behave and express themselves with their friends vary from how they are with their family, and when they are at work. But now, all these complex social rules that already complicate being an adolescent got one more degree of complexity with the development of Smartphones. They now have numerous digital platforms that reproduce existing behaviors, which brings more layers of information and social networks that can be confusing because of the possibilities it provides, both as individuals and as consumers. When adolescents face countless of marketplace opportunities, it is expected that their consumption patterns simultaneously become more superficial. A negative consequence from this could be that they increasingly begin to make snap decisions, which has implications for their judgment, as decisions are then made with less careful consideration. Yet, at the same time Smartphones also help to simplify the world complexity by letting consumers behave in accordance with own needs and want more effortlessly without discomfort or difficulty. In fact, findings suggest that adolescent rely on the need for convenience to navigate and engage appropriately in social relationships, from which Smartphones act as a key facilitator of information sharing and cohesiveness.
Having a Smartphone thus provide adolescents with quick access to multiple products on multiple channels with a greater level of quality, efficiency, and personalization. This enables them to act on impending trends more rapidly, as they have the opportunity to make decisions at any time and place. However, this reality
may also carry some negative consequences in the sense that adolescents often neglect the impact their increasing Smartphone consumption can have. It is evident from the findings that they already perceive Smartphones to be a habit. So, if they continue this behavioral pattern in the future, a consequence could be that they eventually will experience addiction or a deterioration of their well-being if they become too dependent on their Smartphones to create and maintain relationships as well as their identity. Thus, as Smartphones become an integral part of adolescent’s lives, it may progressively reduce their ability to participate in social engagement. However, this potential addiction to Smartphones is not necessarily a result of adolescents being particular responsive to this type of behavior; instead, Smartphone addiction can also be seen as a social problem stemming from a lack of offline social networks. This reality may inhibit comfortable social interactions and feelings of support in the offline environment, consequently resulting in a decline of social engagement, in which adolescents seek longing by escaping to Smartphones. Yet, the social influence (i.e. feelings, emotions and activities) that arise from incorporating Smartphones into existing behaviors are perceived to be a key construct that influences both usage intention and behavior, in which Smartphones plays a central role in adolescent’s everyday life and consumer behavior. Thus, this research suggests that Smartphones have many functionalities for adolescents, most evidently its ability to indirectly express identity through the use of applications and instant communication to retain social relationships that reflect belonging to social groups.
6.2 Managerial Implications
This research found that adolescents utilize Smartphones in many ways. The level of importance attached to the qualities of Smartphones by each respondent varied, which consequently affects how they eventually approach and consume the product. However, despite the variations among the sample, Smartphones were found to play a central role in their behavior, both as consumers and as facilitators of social relationships.
For these reasons, it is essential for Smartphone providers to first and foremost get an understanding of the concept and dynamics of adolescent’s self and the role played by brands since this has a great impact on how they comprehend and evaluate advertising and promotional strategies related to Smartphones. In this respect, it is indispensable that marketers acknowledge how adolescent’s self-identity is often created continually, with shifting experiences of day-to-day life influencing how they consume products and services.
This is important to take into consideration, as it can have major negative consequences for Smartphone providers if they do not manage to accommodate expectations of one of their primary target groups, who are also valuable future consumers.
The evident relationship between social influence and adolescent’s dependence on Smartphones should be viewed by markers as an important factor in influencing their decision making. Marketers should strive to promote Smartphones as a necessity within a social community. This can be achieved, for example, by initiating and spreading positive word-of-mouth through promotions via endorsements from effective reference groups or specific influencers that are currently at the center of attention among adolescents. Also, since positive word-of-mouth frequently positively related with future purchase behavior, and because adolescents were found to possess obvious opinions about distinct Smartphones brands, a valuable tool could be to reinforce and encourage word-of-mouth among consumers as they are, indeed, responsive to and often rely on other’s opinions before making consumption decisions.
One of the aspects that truly make Smartphones is a valuable tool for marketers is the connection it provides.
The connection to always be online and ready to act provides a beneficial opportunity to speak directly to consumers, one to one. To take advantage of this, marketers need to understand what makes it different from any other medium; that is, it is nearly always at hand, it is not fixed to a single location and it is personal.
These factors all contribute to the huge potential of creating new ways for Smartphone providers to reach and interact with adolescents, as they can encounter them where they are, making it easier for adolescents to choose between alternatives in a complex and sometimes interfering marketplace. Another important point for marketers in this regard is the fact that Smartphones are not only receivers but also transmitters of information. This means that Smartphones have become huge sources of information on individual tastes and preferences, which subsequently enables marketers and advertisers to be much more specific in their marketing campaign. They now have the capability to offer even more relevant and personalized messages to different types of individuals, which is of great value since communicating to adolescents is evidently another discipline than reaching previous generations.
Nevertheless, for marketers to reach this successive stage of creating compelling reasons to get adolescents to buy their products, it is crucial to accommodate their expectations and make them satisfied. Yet, this can be a difficult exercise, since consumers are now expecting this increased relevance from advertising along with rapid product innovations and permissible price-quality ratio. Because of this, Smartphone providers must strive to offer consistency in an ever-changing environment, as this type of reassurance can be a central element in the added value they provide. Also, convenience is an important aspect to consider, since this was found to be one of the major influences on why adolescents increasingly resort to their Smartphones in many different situations. Adolescents consider the convenience of Smartphones as a factor that motivates and encourage them to increase their usage. In turn, this contributes to enhancing their dependency on
Smartphones, which signifies the reasons Smartphone providers should emphasize on convenience features such as greater memory space or user-friendly interface when promoting Smartphones to adolescents.
Overall, the still increasing number of reasons for using Smartphones and the fact that children nowadays are given their first Smartphone at a very early age implies significant managerial implications to consider.
As in human social relationships, delivering consistent benefits over time is what develops predictability, then dependability and eventually trust in the brand. Thus, a satisfied adolescent’s is valuable, because it will most likely increase his or her dependency on specific Smartphones, which can have a direct effect on the formation of predictive expectations in future purchase behavior.
6.3 Limitations and Future Research
This research has demonstrated that Smartphones today are integrated into the adolescent’s sense of self through both the experiential and symbolic interpretations attached to consuming the product. However, as with much research effort, the results reported here have limitations. While Smartphones was indeed found to have a significant impact on adolescent’s sense of self even if they not directly articulate this association themselves, it was difficult to determine the exact effect of Smartphones on adolescent’s identity construction, since their perspectives on Smartphones symbolic attributes came across as fluctuating and inconsistent. Therefore, to attain a more nuanced perspective on the phenomenon, I here present two recommendations for future research that could benefit the contribution of this study.
First, as previously discussed, Danish adolescents seem to acknowledge the many possibilities Smartphones provide. Yet, to gain deeper insights into the underlying reasons for their motivation, further research should emphasize how and why adolescents in diverse social groups respond differently to communication messages. While this research has demonstrated some consensus among respondents in relation to how they perceive and incorporate Smartphones into their sense of self, the purposive sample technique used to recruit several participants evidently deteriorate the results. It could be worthwhile to conduct a similar study emphasizing more obvious determinants for selecting adolescents. One advantageous possibility could be to research whether specific age groups (e.g. young adolescents and old adolescents) experience Smartphones differently based on their individual ability to comprehend the symbolism attached to specific Smartphones.
Another interesting aspect to explore in this respect is whether adolescents belonging to distinct social classes have any influence on how they interpret their experiences. Findings indicate that adolescents perceive Smartphones to be an expensive product category, however, this perception may vary depending on what social class they belong to. Overall, by establishing more specific selection criteria, it could be
possible to conduct comparisons studies, resulting in more conceivable results that would enable Smartphone providers to distinguish what specific type of communication or advertising content that would be most effective or persuasive towards particular groups of adolescents.
Second, this research has provided an overview of the connection between Smartphone consumption and social connectedness for adolescents, but additional issues and questions remain. Findings indicate that adolescents have high motivation to comply with cultural norms related to Smartphones, especially within their social groups. Even so, it was difficult to determine exactly which specific cultural norms there exists as well as the underlying reasons for this behavior. For these reasons, I recommend future research within this area of social norms. Such research should aim to understand the environment and interpersonal influences (e.g. peers) to change Smartphone behavior, which presumably would be more effective in terms of truly recognizing the symbolic meanings than a focus on the individual’s identity construction. Smartphones are perceived to be a socially used product where peer influence plays a central role, especially to young people’s decision making as they are very responsive to normative beliefs and other people’s opinions. Peer influences are often affected by perceived norms rather than on the actual norm, which is a very useful and valuable concern for Smartphone providers to consider since this enables them to take advantage of the gap between these two constructs as underpinnings for their marketing efforts. It is necessary to explore the connection between social norms and communication by specifying the meaning of norms and highlight some of the attributes of behavior that determine their receptiveness to normative influences. Hence, important questions remain in this research, including how normative information is shared among group members, which factors promote the influence of norms, and which factors that are necessary for people to exercise their own judgment and disregard normative influence. Such considerations are imperative to include to achieve a more complete assessment of the phenomenon.