A Study onPredictive Switching Behaviour for Mobile Phone Users in Gujarat

Abstract

The Indian telecom industry is growing at a very rapid pace. Both networking and handset-related technologies are refining day by day and year by year. Even the routine activities are executed by the use of mobile phones. Hence, mobile phones nowadays have become a necessity and not a luxury. With the record number of mobile phone owners available in the country, major foreign players inclination to capture the potential of the market has become the priority. This has made the industry more attractive, although local players find it difficult to sustain in the market due to a lack of infrastructural support and marketing-related activities. As entries of many new foreign players in the last five years have made the industry more competitive in India, to survive in the competition, companies must retain consumers and persuade them, not to switch to other brands. The factors such as satisfaction with the current brand of mobile phone, brand image of the company, services provided by the company, loyalty programs offered by the company can affect consumer s attitude for the switching. If a consumer s attitude is developed, then further it will affect their actual behavior. So, the companies need to identify the factors that can cause the switching of a brand. The present study focuses on the measurement of consumer s experience with the usage of the current brand of mobile phones and their perception about the possible offerings by the company. The study has five objectives which help in the identification of the satisfaction level of the consumers with the mobile phone the consumers are using currently, factors that may contribute to their switching intentions, the impact of demographical variables on their switching intentions, the relationship between satisfaction and the switching intention, and lastly the model that can be used to predict the switching. The descriptive study was used with a total of 1502 respondents across the state of Gujarat, wherein the respondents were selected using the hybrid sampling me