Customer Loyalty in Hong Kong's Cellular Market PDF Download

Author: Ching-Gee Wan
Publisher: Open Dissertation Press
ISBN: 9781374723108
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Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This dissertation, "Customer Loyalty in Hong Kong's Cellular Market: an Integrated Framework and Empirical Study" by Ching-gee, Wan, 溫靜之, was obtained from The University of Hong Kong (Pokfulam, Hong Kong) and is being sold pursuant to Creative Commons: Attribution 3.0 Hong Kong License. The content of this dissertation has not been altered in any way. We have altered the formatting in order to facilitate the ease of printing and reading of the dissertation. All rights not granted by the above license are retained by the author. Abstract: Abstract of thesis entitled Customer Loyalty in Hong Kong's Cellular Market: An Integrated Framework and Empirical Study Submitted by Wan Ching Gee for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Hong Kong in April 2003 In the highly competitive mobile communications market of Hong Kong, customer loyalty has become the top priority for companies that wish to maintain market share and profitability. This paper aims to identify the potential determinants of customer loyalty in the mobile telecommunications industry. Based on the research literature on customer satisfaction, switching costs and service loyalty, an integrated framework which encompasses the constructs of overall satisfaction, relative satisfaction, price, switching costs as well as demographics and usage variables is developed. With the use of survey research method, an empirical study has been carried out in the mobile communications market of Hong Kong to examine the usefulness and the predictive ability of the framework. The research results support the framework posited in this paper and contribute to the understanding of customer loyalty in several ways. First of all, this study not only confirms previous research findings on positive satisfaction-loyalty linkage, but also complements previous research by providing a more comprehensive view on the relationship between satisfaction and switching intention. This research has found that the satisfaction-retention relationship is positive but asymmetrical, and the intensity of customer satisfaction has an impact on the satisfaction-retention linkage. Second, the statistical significance of the new construct of relative satisfaction is confirmed by the empirical results of the study, and its inclusion is hence justified. It is found that satisfaction towards a current operator relative to previous operator(s) that have been used significantly impacts on loyalty towards the current operator. Customers who are less satisfied with the present operator are less loyal than those who are equally satisfied or more satisfied with the current operator. Furthermore, empirical results from this study reveal that customers were more loyal if they considered the price they were paying for the mobile services was equitable. Sensitivity to price differential, defined as the percentage of price difference offered by another operator that will induce the customer to switch is also positively, though less strongly, correlated with switching intention. Regarding the impact of switching costs on the intention to switch, the presence of high switching costs deter customers from switching and its impact is more pronounced among dissatisfied customers. Last but not least, age and usage characteristics including the monthly minutes of use, the number of years using mobile phones and staying with the current network operator have significant impact on switching intention. The research findings not only enrich our understanding of customer loyalty in the cellular market, but also generate useful managerial implications for the practitioners in the industry on churn management and retention strategies. An evaluation of the existing loyalty programs is made, it suggests that network operators should make use of innovative value-added services, handset trade-in programs and group calling plans to enhance c