Abstract
The study was conducted to evaluate the nature of the behavioral aspects of the Millennials in terms of loyal and switching behavior as reference to the mobile phone services subscription. The study was conducted in two stages. At the initial stage, a customer survey was conducted with a sample of 521 respondents to identify the nature of retention and switching behaviour of the Millennials in the context of mobile phone services. The comprehensive analysis of customer responses extended the study to the second stage which involved in focus group discussions to probe the perceptions towards the decision of remaining loyal or switching and identify the nature and characteristics of each type of customer. Accordingly, the triangulation research approach involving both qualitative and quantitative data collection methods was adopted to achieve the desired objectives of the study. The study is significant as it evaluates the nature of the behaviour of the Millennials in the context of remaining versus switching and presents a semantic profile of customers with four types of loyalty namely fanatic, satisfied, brand loyal and captive and four types of switchers namely convenience seeker, discontented customer, variety seeker and price-conscious customer with respect to the mobile phone services industry.
Highlights
Customer retention is one of the key strategies in marketing since the acquisition of new customers has become far more expensive than keeping existing customers. (Reichheld & Kenny, 1990; Zeithaml, Berry & Parasuraman, 1996; Reichheld & Schefter, 2000; Skogland & Siguaw, 2004; Ang & Buttle, 2006; Kotler & Keller, 2012)
The study was conducted to evaluate the nature of the behaviour of the millennial customers in terms of loyal versus switching intention in the context of the mobile phone services industry
Since there are conflicting theories in relation to the level of customer loyalty of the Millennials, the nature of the behaviour of customers was evaluated with respect to switching and loyal behaviour
Summary
Customer retention is one of the key strategies in marketing since the acquisition of new customers has become far more expensive than keeping existing customers. (Reichheld & Kenny, 1990; Zeithaml, Berry & Parasuraman, 1996; Reichheld & Schefter, 2000; Skogland & Siguaw, 2004; Ang & Buttle, 2006; Kotler & Keller, 2012). The focus of marketing from customer acquisition to customer retention has accentuated due to product proliferation and severe competition in the contemporary business context (Moreira, Silva & Moutinho, 2016). Customer retention is an essential goal, customer defection rate is very high in the competitive business domain, especially in the services context (Lemmens & Gupta, 2020). Especially retail firms and service organizations face a huge challenge in retaining customers due to higher rate of customer defection commonly known as customer switching (Bitner, 1990; Keaveney, 1995; Patterson & Smith, 2003; Pirc, 2006; Wieringa & Verhoef, 2007; Vyas & Raitani, 2014; Jung et al, 2017)
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