  Mobile phones play a very important role in our life. Mobile phone sales have
been soaring over the last decade due to the growing acceptance of
technological innovations, especially by Generations Y and Z. Understanding the
change in customers' requirement is the key to success in the smartphone
business. New, strong mobile phone models will emerge if the voice of the
customer can be heard. Although it has been widely known that country of origin
has serious impact on the attitudes and purchase decisions of mobile phone
consumers, there lack substantial studies that investigate the mobile phone
preference of young adults aged 18-25, members of late Generation Y and early
Generation Z. In order to investigate the role of country of origin in mobile
phone choice of Generations Y and Z, an online survey with 228 respondents was
conducted in Hungary in 2016. Besides the descriptive statistical methods,
crosstabs, ANOVA and Pearson correlation are used to analyze the collected data
and find out significant relationships. Factor analysis (Principal Component
Analysis) is used for data reduction to create new factor components. The
findings of this exploratory study support the idea that country of origin
plays a significant role in many respects related to young adults' mobile phone
choice. Mobile phone owners with different countries of origin attribute
crucial importance to the various product features including technical
parameters, price, design, brand name, operating system, and memory size.
Country of origin has a moderating effect on the price sensitivity of consumers
with varied net income levels. It is also found that frequent buyers of mobile
phones, especially US brand products, spend the most significant amount of
money for their consumption in this aspect.
