A study on consumer switching behaviour in cellular service provider

Indian mobile market is a fastest growing market and is forecasted to reach 868.47 million users by 2013. India has seen rapid increase in number of players which caused the tariff rates to hit an all time low. This allowed the players to target the low income population increasing the market share. The availability of number of subscriber options for consumers and varied tariff rates of each player, lead the consumers to switch the service providers. The objectives of the study are to find the factors that influence the consumers in switching the service provider and to know the likeliness of switching the service provider. The type of research used for this study is descriptive research design. The area covered under this study was Chennai due to availability of well mixed population base in Tamil Nadu. A well structured questionnaire was designed and administrated to collect samples across Chennai. Due to high population and need for variety of respondents, Cluster sampling method was chosen. The sample size was 112. The variables considered for the study are Consumer demographics, Consumer satisfaction with existing service provider, Factors influencing the switching behaviour and factors affect the switching behaviour of consumers was grouped into 4 categories namely Customer service, service problems, usage cost and others. The results were found out from the study, which reveals that call rates plays the most important role in switching the service provider followed by network coverage, value added service, Customer care and advertisement plays the least important role. It is found that there is a relation between switching the service provider and the factors (Customer service, service problem, usage cost, etc.). After analysing the findings of the study, we suggest the mobile providers to concentrate on increasing network stability and setting tariff rates competitively.