The Need for Smartphone Incentives

Source: Android Pit

TITLE: SYNTHESIZING RESEARCH ON How smartphone companies are able to innovate and incentivize consumers to buy their products. (OVERALL TOPIC)

 The economic principle I researched was ¨People generally respond to incentives in predictable ways¨ 2-3 SMALL BODY PARAGRAPHS: (Broken into easy to read paragraphs, formatting font to make it easier to follow main ideas, etc.) Provide 3-4 specific examples from your research that help illustrate the economic principle by embedding link to previous blog posts:

 First, ¨Smartphones: Is there any innovation left in this market?¨ explains why this economic principle is crucial to the smartphone industry. As more and more smartphones come out every year, the hardware for each phone is not changing that much compared to its predecessor. The only real way to innovate smartphones and make them unique in order to sell them is to make new features/apps or accessories, as we have seen with Microsofts Cortana and Google Assistant. There are also phones that are inexpensive that can do all the basic functions that most flagship phones, such as the Galaxy, Pixel, and iPhone, can do.

 Second, ¨Worldwide smartphone shipments DOWN for first time ever¨ further explains the increase in cheaper smartphones. Sales for Chinese phone manufacturers such as OnePlus and Xiaomi have been increasing because they are much cheaper alternatives to Apple, Samsung, and Google and the hardware on their phones match-up pretty well. Manufacturers have to find a way to separate themselves from these cheaper alternatives and incentivize people to buy their products, which is currently a major issue as worldwide shipments for smartphones have been down for the first time ever.

Third, ¨The Effect of Promoter Incentive to the Smartphone Sales in Retail Chains: A Turkish Case¨ demonstrates how companies have attempted to incentivize their products. Companies like to show off their better prices and offers when releasing a new phone, and the marketing that goes behind their products also heavily influences people to make the “right” choice when they go to buy a smartphone. They market their products according to the sales or their previous products in certain territories. Turkey, for example, is huge when it comes to smartphones, so companies would like to compare prices, show off certain offers, etc. heavily in Turkey.