Determinants of customer switching behavior in telecommunication industry - Sri Lankan context

Abstract

Sri Lankan telecommunication industry is fastly growing and there are number of operators engaged in huge competition, also there are new comers coming into the market in recent past. Since the competition is increasing and market growth is reaching saturation in the operators prospective they need to sustain their customers at the same time attract others customers. In this study we have tried to find the influencing factors of customers switching behavior in Sri Lankan telecommunication market. This study will give an idea to the operators why customers switch from one operator to another and what are determents of their behaviors. Also as a secondary objective we studies the idea of Mobile Number Portability concept in our local market. Referring previous literatures it was found that price, switching cost, service quality and trust on operator are the determents. These factors are determined by number of variables. As this study had a limited time and resource availability, this study has been done on Sri Lankan middle income middle managerial level working group by conducting a questioner survey. The propositions taken in this study are the switching cost, price, service quality and trust are determines of switching behavior. Several variable measures are considered under each of this constructs. Descriptive statistical analysis has done to test the proposition. And the result showed most of the proposition are accepted. It has been observed in mobile and fixed line segment the determents are slightly different. Switching cost is not a determinant in mobile sector. Whereas price structure and service quality are determines. In the fixed line segment price, switching cost and service quality are found to be determinants. In any case trust on operator is not a determinant Also there was a correlation among service quality variables. Additional survey has done among customers regarding their interest in Mobile Number portability. This surveyed group seems that they have not much interested on this option. It is recommended to the mobile operators to increase the switching cost in order to retain their customers as the mobile sector not showing the switching cost as barrier for switching.