23 BRAND SWITCHING BEHAVIOUR IN THE GENERATION Y: EMPIRICAL STUDIES ON SMARTPHONE USERS Indah Fintikasari 1 , Elia Ardyan 2* 12 Sekolah Tinggi Ilmu Ekonomi Surakarta, Central Java * Corresponding author; Email: ardyan.sbs@gmail.com Abstract Lifestyle, variety seeking, customer trust and promotion are some factors that can be a trigger. The sample of respondents used in this study is 385 respondents’ smartphone users who have experience of brand switching, while the analysis of this study using structural equation modelling (SEM) and to process this research data used AMOS version 20. The result indicated that lifestyle and variety seeking is able to increase brand switching, especially on smartphone product users. Consumer trust in a particular brand still unable to reduce their desire to switch brand significantly, another result also indicated that promotion unable to increase the desire to switch brands. Keywords: Lifestyle, seeking variety, customer trust, brand switching, generation Y. Introduction Brand switching is an important topic in the con- text of generation Y. Generation Y is difficult to loyal to a particular brand (Syrett & Lammiman, 2004). Parmen (2013) explained about the comparison of lo- yalty to retail between generation Y and baby boom- er, loyalty to retail in generation Y is lower compared with baby boomer. Y generation is easier to switch brand. One of the products that has a short lifecycle is the smartphone. Almost every month the company is trying to launch new products. It is because of the lifestyle of consumer who always demands some- thing new. The result of Viswanathan and Jain (2013) study finds that generation Y has a short-term point of view in terms of purchasing and decision making to consume a product, they also explains that generation Y will replace its product once every three months. Basically, the meaning of brand switching is to move loyalty from one brand to another by the cus- tomer. Brand switching indicates that the original brand is no longer attractive (Al-Kwifi & Ahmed, 2015). Customer prefers to switch to more attractive brands (Ping, 1993). Anderson and Sullivan (1993) explain when consumer switches to another brand, it because the strategy developed is not able to maintain or motivate existing consumers. Several other studies explain some of the factors that trigger brand swit- ching behaviour is as follows competition, behaviour and time (Srinivasan & Ratcford, 1991), interpersonal relationships, marketing strategies (Wathne, Biong & Heide, 2001), and customer seeking for variety (Aria- nto, 2011). To understand the different variety of brand swi- tching factor is essential to create a business strategy (Al-Kwifi, Ahmed & Yammout, 2014). Shukla (2004) explained that by analysing the cause of brand switching, the manager will be able to repress the decline happened and build a successful company. According to (Peter, 1987), it would be more profi- table if the company maintain the existing customer rather than find new customers. The company inabi- lity to maintain customer will result in a decline in the image of the company (Lopez, Redondo & Olivan, 2006). There are two things that should become the main concern of marketers in an effort to reduce brand switching behaviour, that is, pay attention to the pattern of the customer in using the brand and the le- vel of satisfaction of the product (Shukla, 2004). It is important to understand brand switching from the generation Y point of view. Only a few stu- dies discuss brand switching from generation Y point of view, mostly focusing on brand loyalty in genera- tion Y (Lazarevic, 2012) or decision making in gene- ration Y (Solka, Jackson & Lee, 2011; Viswanathan & Jain, 2013). The purpose of this study was to examine the factor that becomes a trigger of brand switching on generation Y, particularly in the smart- phone industry. Factors that become triggers are as follows: lifestyle, variety seeking, customer trust, and promotion. The result of this study will give a good contribution either theoretical or managerial. Relationship between Life Style and Brand Switching Lifestyle is an important aspect in marketing. Generally, lifestyle in the marketing is used to con- duct market segmentation (Plummer, 1974; Valentine & Power, 2013). From various references, Gonzalez and Bello (2002) concluded that definition of lifestyle is how individuals spend their time and money. Mow- JMK, VOL. 20, NO. 1, MARCH 2018, 23–30 DOI: 10.9744/jmk.20.1.23–30 ISSN 1411-1438 print / ISSN 2338-8234 online