An Exploratory Study on Service Quality Measurement of the Fourth Generation Mobile Telecommunication: The Case of the Korean Market

Abstract

Now, the Korean mobile communication market already reached full growth. In this situation, mobile communication companies are constantly trying to find ways to differentiate their services. But it was quite difficult. The only thing that differentiates their service is quality. This study aims to examine the impact of service quality and satisfaction on continuous use intention in the Korean mobile telecommunication context. More specifically, the objectives of the present study are to investigate how service quality and satisfaction influence directly continuous use intention of LTE, and what is the most significant constructing factor of service quality as antecedents of a subscriber's satisfaction and continuous use intention of LTE. Though studies measuring service quality mainly used SERVQUAL and SERVPERF, studies considering the uniqueness of mobile communication market were rare. There were few studies that measured the quality of Korean mobile communication service. But they didn't reflect the distinctiveness of the market. We were able to find critical common variables that can be applied to Korean mobile communication market from prior research. We suggested billing system, device, call quality, corporate image, speed, customer support and bonus system as core variables of service quality. Afterwards, we conducted a questionnaire survey of college students mainly in their twenties. As a result, customer support, corporate image, and speed among service quality factor presented in this paper significantly influenced customer satisfaction. Also, customer satisfaction has a strong relationship with continuous use intention.