The Study On The Needs Of High End Mobile Phone Conusmers A Perspective Of Means-End Chain

China high end mobile phone market witnessed continuously growth in recent years and more phone makers are entering into the high end market segment. Though high end market is more profitable, manufactures are increasingly suffering from high homogeneity of products, under this circumstance, understanding consumers’needs and developing product differentiation strategy accordingly to gain more market share becomes a common issue that challenging mobile phone manufacturers.This paper is aimed to uncover high end consumer’s specific needs on consumer value, consequence and product attribute levels by utilizing the theory of Means-End Chain, and furthermore, to explore the relations among different consumer need levels.In terms of research methodology, this paper takes Means-End Chain as the theoretical basis. In statistical data processing, exploratory factor analysis is employed to extract consumers’need on values&consequences, and Pearson correlation analysis is applied to uncover the relations among different levels.The results show that there do exist a means-end chain in high end consumers’needs on mobile phones, and their needs can be categorized as three levels, namely value, consequence and attributes. The exploratory analysis extracted4value factors and5consequence factors.4value factors are:excitement&experience, leading technology, quality&taste and simplicity&rational.5consequence factors are:high level social status, entertainment&fun, business productivity, design&stylish, pragmatic&convenience.The research reveals the correlations among values and consequences as below:(1) Excitement&experience was positively correlated with pragmatic&convenience, business productivity, design&stylish and high level social identity symbol.(2) Leading technology was positively correlated with business productivity and entertainment&fun.(3) Quality&taste was positively correlated with high level social status and design&stylish.(4) Simplicity&rational was positively correlated with entertainment&fun.Moreover, this paper also analyzed the competition characteristics of high end mobile phone market based on4P theory of marketing, including forecasting the2013high end mobile phone market size by adopting time series methodology.At last, combining the research results of high end mobile phone consumers and the competition characteristics of high end market, the research provides three piece of advice for Chinese manufacturers who are weaker in high end mobile phone competition, namely:(1) improving the effectiveness of market communication;(2) building brand equity; and (3) strengthening product competence.