Abstract
The telecom industry in India has witnessed substantial growth over the last decade. Rapid growth of telecommunications is opening up the doors for many telecom players from Europe, Asia and other parts of the world, resulting in increased competition and tariff reductions. In the present competitive environment, the services perceived by the customers and their behavioural intentions play a pivotal role in the customer switching process among service providers. With the changing expectations of service quality, it becomes imperative to discover the gap between customer expectations and customer perception. In this context, the aim of the present study is to identify the existing gap between customer expectations and perceptions and investigate the relationship between post-experience perception of service quality and customers’ behavioural intentions. The data was collected from 500 customers in Delhi NCR, India. Paired sample t-test and multiple correlation analysis were performed. The results of the study points out the key areas wherein the service gaps are considerably high such as reliability and responsiveness. The customer behavioural intentions, such as “Complain to customer service if a problem occurs”, “Switch to another service provider” and “Reducing the usage with a particular service provider”, have shown a strong relationship with quality of service. The findings of the study confirm that the perceptions of customers regarding the quality of service received definitely have an impact on their behaviour.
Highlights
The telecommunication sector has emerged as one of the key sectors that significantly contribute to the growth of the Indian economy
“this study aims to bridge the aforementioned research gap through investigating the difference between customer expectations and perceptions related to service quality delivery as well as the relationship between the post-experience perception of service quality and customers’ behavioural intentions in the context of the Indian telecom sector.”
The first objective is to examine the gap between customer expectations and perceptions of service quality delivered by Indian telecommunication service providers
Summary
The telecommunication sector has emerged as one of the key sectors that significantly contribute to the growth of the Indian economy. As per the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (2017),” the telecom sector had only 898.02 million overall telephone subscribers in March 2013, and the number increased to 1206.71 million at the end of September 2017, showing an addition of 308.69 million. This increase is entirely due to an increase in the wireless connections from 867.04 million at the end of September 2013 to 1183.04 by end of March 2017. With rising expectations and growing awareness, consumers in India are increasingly demanding superior quality services (Chopra & Chawla, 2018). “these operators are struggling to ensure what customers perceive and expect in order to sustain their customers, the increase in subscribers’ switching behaviour to other service providers is a matter of concern (Pandey & Kumar, 2018).”
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