Customers Switching in Pakistani Mobile Sector

Title

Customer Switching in Pakistani mobile carriers

Introduction

Purpose:

The purpose of our study is to examine which factor influence switching intention in Pakistan telecommunication sector.

Background:

In Pakistan, from past few years mobile communication has emerged as a fast growing industry. Pakistan is considered one of progressive country of the world in which Mobile phone subscribers has increased over 123.5 million. That’s the reason that many foreign companies are interested to invest in this sector.  Telephone & Telegraph (T&T) department provided telecom services for the first time in Pakistan. T&T department was run by the Government. T&T department was later merged into a Corporation. Presently there are about 5 cellular agencies (U-fone, Warid, Telenor, Zong, and Mobilink) that are providing their services.

Problem statement:

In Pakistan mobile communication sector has showed rapid growth and now it is considered one of the important sectors of economy from different prospective like foreign investment & economic growth. But important thing is that still cellular networks have not yet satisfied their customers due to low performance of services. Although they have high market share but it’s difficult for the companies to provide good service quality due to which they are unable to satisfy their customers.

Significance:

Our study will provide guidance to other researchers in finding which factors influence switching intention.

Key words: Customers switching, service quality, Switching intentions, Word of mouth.

Literature Review:

Service Quality

"Providing the customer with what he wants, when he wants it, and at acceptable cost, within the operating constraints of the business", and "providing a better service than the customer expects" (p 48, 49 Lewis 1988) (Journal of marketing management 1991) Service quality is an organizational construct (Crosby 1979), service quality and its requirement are not easy to accumulated for customers (Takeuchi and Quelch 1983), quality measurement also creates problems for the researchers ( Monroea nd Krishnan1 983),  better service quality also contribute to raise the market share (Anderson and Zeithaml 1984; Phillips, Chang, and Buzzell 1983), the search for quality is most important thing to creates the customer intention (Rabin 1983), Day by day customers demanding of quality increases (Leonard and Sasser 1982, Takeuchi and Quelch 1983) service quality is requirements of the customers (Crosby (1979), It is most difficult to understand the perceive services and service quality (Gronroos 1982), service quality measure is to know that all the customer’s expectations are fulfilling or not (Lewis and Booms 1983) In today’s competition service quality is essential strategy for success (Dawkins and Reichheld 1990; Parasuraman, Zeithami, and Berry 1985; Reichheld and Sasser 1990; Zeithaml,P arasuramana, nd Berry 1990) In 1980s, most organizations starts work to understand the term service quality and what is meant in the mind of customers and after understanding that they developed the strategies to increase the service quality (ParasuramanZ, eithaml, and Berry 1985, 1988), financial success is only possible when you increase the service quality (Germano 1992; Keams and Nadler 1992), if your service quality is better your profit will be higher-than-normal (Ford Motor Company’s researchers 1990), service quality depends on loyalty if services are better than customer will be more loyal to your organization (Ten ner & DeTbro, 1992), the service recipient is customer if service quality is better customer will be in contact with you (Zeithaml, Para suraman, & Berry, 1990), service quality is that how was the services. Are these services delivered to the customers in better quality? Are these services are fulfilling the customer’s needs and demands? (Babbar, 1992)