Determinants of Customer Switching towards Mobile Number Portability

Abstract

Customer churn is haunting Indian mobile telecom services in a big way. Mobile number portability has further aggravated this problem for mobile telecommunication companies, although it has rightly empowered the subscribers of these services. Telecom sector is a very capital-intensive sector, so a customer’s stay with a cellular services operator effects its earning. The efforts are being made to predict and model the customer churn towards telecom services, so as to maximize customer lifetime value for the company. Before making predictions of customer switching behaviour, it is imperative to understand those variables which determine customer’s loyalties towards a mobile service’s vendor. So this study provides an exploratory analysis of the factors which become reasons for discontinuing services of a cellular operator. The results have identified factors like: network, tariffs, technology, advertising, rewards programme and external factors which lead to switching of a mobile services operator.