What Do We Know About Customer Churn Behaviour in the Telecommunication Industry? A Bibliometric Analysis of Research Trends, 1985–2019

Abstract

The literature on telecommunications customer churn behaviour has grown in importance and volume since the early 2000s. This study performed a quantitative bibliometric retrospection of selected journals that qualified for the ABDC journal quality list to examine relevant studies published by them on customer churn research in telecommunication. Using bibliometric data from 175 research articles available in the Scopus database, this review sheds light on the publication trends, articles, stakeholders, prevalent research techniques, and topics of interest over three decades (1985–2019). According to the findings of this review, the current level of contributions are manifested through ten overarching groups of scholarship—namely churn prediction and modelling, feature selection techniques and comparison, customer retention strategy and relationship management, service recovery, pricing and switching cost, legislation, legal, and policy, word-of-mouth and post-switching behaviour, new service adoption, brand credibility, and loyalty. The existing literature has predominantly utilized quantitative methods to their full potential. For far too long, scholars, according tothe study’s central thesis, have ignored the metatheoretical consequences of relying solely on a logical positivism paradigm. In addition, we highlight research directions and the need for customer churn research to go beyond feature selection and modelling.