A total of 15 students are randomly selected from a college based in western China to participate in the pilot interview. In later formal interview, 80 students (the female and male accounting for 40 respectively) are selected from other three colleges. All students are required to involve in similar interview for the first time.

In the study, qualitative interview is adopted to investigate consumers’ concern and selection of telephone brands as well as their reasons. An interview is a conversation where questions are asked, answers are given and recorded for exploration of social condition, with specific purpose and structure (Steinar & Svend, 2009) . In the interview, interviewer raises questions to interviewees, according to specified outline and theme and by use of some tools such as interview outlines and voice recorder. Interviews range from open-ended, semi-structured and structured conversations. Study-based interview may be influenced by cultural difference and thus emphasis shall be put on question formulation, tone and design of questions (Meng, 2004) . Interview is widely applied in sociology, pedagogy, psychology, economics, management and other fields for data collection (Chai, 1994) .

1) Interview preparation

Before the formal interview, a voice recorder and a roller ball pen as well as an A4 paper shall be prepared. The lab shall be free of any noise, to ensure interviewees’ clear grasp of questions raised by interviewer and serious thinking of such questions, and high-quality recording. Face-to-face interview shall conducted, which helps interviewer better observe the interviewee in their conversation.

2) Pilot interview

Pilot interview was launched in December 2016 before formal interview. At this stage, 15 interviewees were involved in the pilot interview, for the sake of modifying and upgrading the interview outline. Pilot interview is designed to assess impact of each question listed in interview outline on study results, before formal large-scale interview. The major method is to set up an independent study group comprising five members. All members shall respectively encode documents related to above 15 interviewees with different serial numbers in the lab, then make a discussion over the result through summary, and formulate the ultimate interview outline after modification.

3) Formal interview

Three interviewers were arranged in the study. According to the ultimate outline modified after pilot interview, they engaged 80 interviewers in separate interview from January to March 2017. Interview content was divided into two parts: interviewees’ preference for domestic telephone brands or foreign ones, and the names of their loved ones; the reason why they prefer these brands and sharing of their personal experiences. By interviewees’ consent, interviewers could record their conversion but should not interrupt interviewees during the interview.

According to above interview targeted to 80 interviewees, top five Chinese telephone brands and top five foreign ones are selected. They are Xiaomi, Meizu, Huawei, ZTE and OPPO in China, and Apple, Samsung, BlackBerry, Nokia and Sony outside China.

The interview with 80 interviewees finds that both female and male interviewees show the similar preference (p > 0.05) for brands in the Chi-Squared Test. In detail, preference rates for the female and the male are 50.1% and 50.8% respectively in terms of Chinese brands; and are 49.9% and 49.2% respectively as far as foreign brands. On the whole, 53.0% of interviewees prefer Chinese telephone brands and believe that Chinese telephone brands are superior to foreign ones; 37.9% of interviewees show the preference for foreign telephone brands and they give similar reason; 9.1% interviewees like two categories at the same time, or vice versa. There are significant difference among the numbers of interviewees respectively preferring Chinese and foreign telephone brands and others. However, the number of interviewees preferring domestic ones heads the list. (p < 0.001, d = 0.188, statistical power = 1.000) (Table 1).

According to interview materials, three aspects of factors influencing interviewees’ selection for telephone brands are summarized, including 15 categories: influence of others, popularity, herd mentality, brand image and patriotism (social factor); comfort, personal preference, consuming capacity, individual demand and personal experience (personal factor); and practicability, appearance design, the quality of telephone, cost performance and operation speed (telephone factor). By means of data encoding, above factors are listed in the Table 2 and attached with example sentences. The Five-point Likert Method is adopted in the study which includes variations in five levels, namely, “strongly disagree = 1”, “disagree = 2”, “neutral = 3”, “agree = 4”, and “strongly agree = 5”.

The table of the variance analysis of each factor in choosing telephone brands

Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

(Table 3) indicates that appearance design is significantly different (F = 4.59, p < 0.05, η p 2 = 0.156). The power of the statistical test is 0.042. Hence, appearance design is a crucial factor in choosing telephone brands. Meanwhile, there is a marginal significant relationship between brand image and the study objects (F₁ = 2.58, p = 0.08, η p 2 = 0.058); the power is 0.313. And the same relationship exists between operation speed and the object telephone brands (F₂ = 2.67, p = 0.08, η p 2 = 0.059) with the power of 0.315.

The top five Chinese brands and overseas brands were listed respectively according to the brands mentioned by college students in the interviews. Nokia, though its glory has faded away, still holds a place in customers’ preference. As a classic brand, Nokia has played an indispensable role in the mobile communication of Chinese over the past decades, according to the description of subjects in the extensive interview. Nokia to Chinese is more than a telephone brand but an epitome of dream and memory witnessing the development of Chinese telephone brands. Moreover, BlackBerry stays active among the top ones despite of its small market share in mainland China. The subjects who are passionate about science and technology give the credit to the technical indexes and functions of BlackBerry in later intensive interviews.

Note: *p < 0.05, **p < 0.01, ***p < 0.001.

The interviews manifest college students’ penchant for Chinese telephone brands. Some students said: “As a Chinese, I prefer Chinese mobile phones.” and “We should support domestic brands as they are blossoming these years.” The shared social and cultural elements of certain country and nation offer the local customers a sense of convergence to a certain extent which leads customers to prefer domestic brands with national identity, ethnocentrism, and a sense of superiority (Watson &Wright, 2000) . The study supports the finding of previous studies that the Tendency exists among the masses including cyber citizens, adolescents, and college students (Matevž et al., 2016; Li & Zhang, 2015; Wang et al., 2016; Ran, 2010; Wu & Zhu, 2010) . Other studies show that customers have cognitive differences towards different brands. Domestic brands give them a sense of morality while foreign brands make them feel approachable (Zhang, 2017) . Mental factors including patriotism and national pride as the virtues highly praised by the public stress the superiority of choosing domestic brands; therefore, customers incline to domestic products in spite of the better-quality overseas products.

The study also finds that the telephone itself is the main reason for Chinese college students to make their choices. The appearance design of telephone is a vital factor, followed by operation speed and brand image. The effect of operation speed, one of telephone performances, on college students choosing telephone brands shown in the study supports the previous findings (Han, 2012; Xu & Wang, 2016) ; appearance design has leaped to the top factor, which reflects the new trend in telephone market. Representative, stylish, and individual, Chinese college students of the new era are the mainstream of consumption. The consuming characters of Chinese college students are follows: 1) pursuing novelty and distinction, college students are particular about fashion tide and sensitive to latest products and technologies, thus laying extra emphasis on the sense of fashion and appearance of mobile phones (Guo, 2006) . 2) As a consumer group without income, college students take account of the price of telephones. The subjects in the study mainly are from western China where the economy cries for development. Thus the price is one of the top concerns of them. 3) The independence and dependence of consumption behavior together manipulate college students. Perceptual consumption defeating rational consumption brings college students impulse and emotional buying (Hao & Zhou, 2012; Yin, 2012) ; while the surge of self-consciousness make the young vulnerable to the outside effects including the opinions of others (Li, 2014) . Hence, the telephone brand with eye-catching appearance, prominent quality, reasonable price and brilliant brand image is the favorite of Chinese college students to meet the demands for aesthetic quality and practicability.