Mobile Carrier Change Intention Analysis Based on IT Service Management Platform

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to understand the user intention to continue or change mobile carriers, considering the current mobile phone market in Japan. The market was mainly shared by three Major Mobile-Carriers (3MMC): docomo, au, and SoftBank. However, the number of Mobile Virtual Network Operators (MVNOs) customers has been increasing recently, and Rakuten Mobile has entered the mobile phone market as a Mobile Network Operator (MNO). Currently, the mobile phone market is highly competitive and there is little difference in mobile phone services offered by various carriers. Under such competitive conditions, mobile carriers need an appropriate method to develop service strategies to maintain or increase their market share. To understand users’ mobile carrier change intention, we classified each carrier’s users into two user segments based on continuous or change intention and analyzed the differences between the segments. We showed that the user segmentation model can extract information about the differences in characteristics of two user segments from their decision-making factors and user attributes with respect to mobile services. Understanding these differences is important as carriers consider when and what strategies to implement in order to maintain or increase market share.