Satisfied with Quality Yet Wants to Switch: Case of ‘Satiated Customer’ in Telecom Services

Abstract

Telecom Service Industry in India is going through a phase of high growth, excessive competition, continual lowering of tariffs and rapid change of technology. Policies are still evolving and causing substantial change in the competitive landscape. Telecom Services have become more commoditized; it is easy to replicate. The market can be compared to a red sea, and it does not give sustainable competitive advantage. Customer retention and addition of new customers becomes very crucial for the profitability and survival. The research takes the responses of 803 customers of different telecom service providers and analyses their response with respect to quality perception, duration of use and switch intention. The responses are further correlated to the demographics of the sample to generate understanding about their behavior. The research finds that there is a need to relook at the relatedness of ‘loyalty’ and ‘service quality’ concepts in telecom sector, precisely when customers are simultaneously using multiple services from multiple service providers. The data analysis indicates that long term customers with higher level of satisfaction and higher income are more likely to have greater intention to switch.

DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n6s4p192