Switching Costs, Customer Satisfaction and Brand Loyalty: An Empirical Study on Airtel Cellular Services in Chittor District

The Mobile market in India is very robust and is the second largest mobile telecom market in the world, adding nearly 20million subscribers every month. This rapid growth in the mobile segment has been driven by an enabling policy framework and intense competition. With up to 12 competing operators in a circle, the tariffs in India are the lowest as compared to global benchmarks. Even though the literature on customer satisfaction is normally related to customer loyalty, a formal model explaining the steps between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty is missing. It has been mentioned that customer satisfaction is necessary, but not a sufficient condition for improving customer loyalty. There are evidences that despite favorable customer satisfaction, companies are losing important buyers of their products and services every day. If there is no straight forward relationship between customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, then what is there in the middle? How can we explain that customer satisfaction does not always lead to customer loyalty? The present study will address these primary problems by establishing relationship between customer satisfaction, switching costs and brand loyalty.