%0 Journal Article
%T A Study on Consumer Switching Behaviour in Cellular Service Provider: A Study with reference to Chennai
%A M.Sathish
%A K.Santhosh Kumar
%A K.J.Naveen
%A V.Jeevanantham
%J Far East Journal of Psychology and Business
%D 2011
%I 
%X Indian mobile market is one of the fastest growing markets and is forecasted to reach 868.47 million users by 2013. India has seen rapid increase in the number of players which caused the tariff rates to hit an all time low. This allowed the players to target the low income population thereby increasing the market share. The availability of a number of subscriber options for consumers and varied tariff rates of each player, lead the consumers to switch between service providers. The objectives of the study are to find the factors that influence the consumers in switching the service provider and to delve into finding out 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 administered 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 that affect the switching behaviour of consumers and these were grouped into 4 categories namely customer service, service problems, usage cost and others. The results from the study reveal that call rates plays the most important role in switching the service provider followed by network coverage, value added service and customer care while 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 propose that the mobile providers concentrate on increasing network stability and setting tariff rates competitively.
%K Switching Behaviour
%K Cellular service provider
%K network stability
%U http://www.fareastjournals.com/files/V2N2P5.pdf