Determinants Analysis of Customer switching Behavior in Ghanaian Telecommunication Industry, An Exploratory and Inferential study

Abstract

The Mobile Telecommunications industry in Ghana has over the years seen telecommunication firms such as Ghana Telecom (GT) now Vodafone Ghanahas faced a lot of competition from the its competitors. Even though Vodafone the then Ghana telecom was the incumbent but was over taken by Scancom Ghana (now trading under the brand name MTN).Due to the increase in competition among the telecommunication industries has made it important for the companies to focus on the factors customer retention. The paper outlines the causes of customer churn behavior as outlines in her study of service industry identification of additional factors to the telecommunication industry in Ghana, Susan Keaveney (1995). The main aim of the paper is to identify the most important factors that causes customer to switch and also access the relationship that exist between the factors and the switching likelihood. Using descriptive statistics, relative importance index of the various factors were also computed to obtain the most important factors. The paper then present chi-square test of independence between then customer switching likelihood against the factors that causes switching. The paper reported that the high tariff was the most important factor most Ghanaians consider when considering to switch from one network to another. hidden charges, service disruptions, unreliable help lines, inadequate or incomplete information provided by service providers and finally attractive features offered by other networks were the first five factors ranked to be the most important factors. the confirmatory test of independence using chi-square test of independent confirm the truth that the factors truly contribute to customer churn. The paper finally made recommendation the telecommunication industry in Ghana on their customer retention strategies.