A mediation of customer satisfaction relationship between service quality and repurchase intentions for the telecom sector in Pakistan: A case study of university students

Abstract

Organizations always look forward to long lasting success. For long lasting benefits and greater returns, organizations continuously try to satisfy their customers in order to retain them and get their future repurchase intentions. Future repurchase intentions of customers are outcomes of various organizational efforts. As such, one of the most important determinants of customer repurchase intentions discussed by researchers is offering, competitively, the best service quality to customers. All organizations offer the best possible service to their customers in order to retain them and create positive repurchase intentions in the future. This study aims to study the impact of service quality on customer repurchase intentions. Satisfaction is a variable which is an outcome of better service quality, and in return, it gives customers the zeal to stay with the service provider and creates greater repurchase intentions for the customers. So, satisfaction is considered as a mediating variable in the study. The study is conducted in the telecom sector (only cellular companies) of Pakistan. Service quality is measured using Parasuraman et al. (1988) SERVQUAL model containing 5 dimensions of service quality (tangibles, responsiveness, empathy, assurance and reliability). Nonetheless, the relationship of service quality with customer repurchase intentions is also studied. The data were collected from 331 young mobile users, and as such, correlation and regression analysis were used to analyze the data. However, results and discussion are presented. Key words: Service quality, mediating variable, satisfaction, customer repurchase intentions, telecom sector, cellular companies.