Abstract
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to determine the role of service quality (SQ), trust and commitment to customer loyalty (CL) for telecom service users. Further, the moderating role of gender, marital status and connection type within the model was tested.Design/methodology/approachA measurement model was created based on valid 615 responses from Indian TSUs for SQ, trust, commitment and loyalty with the help of partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM). Multi-group analysis (MGA) was conducted to understand the moderating effect of marital status, gender and connection type within the model.FindingsThe results suggest that, out of five dimensions of SQ, only responsiveness, assurance and empathy have a significant positive relationship with both commitment and trust. Tangibility has a significant positive relationship with trust only. Both commitment and trust have a significant impact on loyalty. It was noticed that both commitment and trust act as mediators between three SQ dimensions (assurance, empathy and responsiveness) and CL. MGA revealed that empathy and responsiveness positively induce trust in telecom users who are single. Whereas, assurance increases commitment toward telecom service providers in married users. Assurance and empathy significantly contribute toward commitment and trust, respectively, in male users as compared to females. Empathy was found important for postpaid users for trust-building, whereas trust was found to be more important for prepaid users to stay loyal to the service provider.Originality/valueThis article contributes toward understanding the role of SQ, trust and commitment to CL moderated by marital status, gender and connection type in an integrated model concerning telecom service.
Highlights
Technological advancements shifted the usage of landlines to mobile phones in the telecommunication sector for business, social and political purposes (Ngoma and Ntale, 2019)
While searching for literature focused on telecom service and customer loyalty (CL) in India, we found that previous studies invited examination of the effects of service quality (SQ) and other variables on CL (Kaur and Soch, 2013)
For marital status (Table 8), we observed that assurance increases commitment toward telecom service providers (TSPs) in married users at a 1% level of significance
Summary
Technological advancements shifted the usage of landlines to mobile phones in the telecommunication sector for business, social and political purposes (Ngoma and Ntale, 2019). The telecommunication services have made significant infiltration in India over the years; mainly, during the past decade, there is an exemplary shift from the fixed line to mobiles (Barman et al, 2018; Gupta and Jain, 2020; Kumar et al, 2017). © Prateek Kalia, Robin Kaushal, Meenu Singla and Jai Parkash. The full terms of this licence may be seen at http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode
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