TITLE:
Exploring the Main Factors Affecting Consumer Choice of Mobile Phone Service Provider Contracts
AUTHORS:
Muhammad Turki Alshurideh
KEYWORDS:
Customer Choice, Mobile Phone, Mobile Contract, Contract Choice, Contractual Behaviour Setting
JOURNAL NAME:
International Journal of Communications, Network and System Sciences,
Vol.9 No.12,
December
23,
2016
ABSTRACT: Thisstudy aims to investigate the
main factors affecting a consumer’s choice of mobile phone service provider
contracts, and to determine which of these factors are important in a
consumer’s decision-making process. As this decision is particularly pertinent
within the contractual behavior setting, there is a need to explore the main
factors that shape mobile phone subscriber choices when entering into a mobile
phone telecommunication service contract. To do so, a set of mobile
interrelated contract dimensions and a set of mobile service provider
interrelated dimensions were identified and tested. The convenience sampling
technique was employed and 400 questionnaires were distributed to mobile phone
subscribers in Jordan with a response rate of 78.5%. By using the regression
analysis, result analysis revealed that the main factor affecting consumer
choices was “contract features”, with a relative importance of 41%. After a set
of mobile phone contract hypotheses were identified and tested, it was found
that contract price, with about 15% relative importance, was the main contract
feature that affected consumer choices, followed by the size of data that were
related to the number of minutes and/or number of messages offered within the
mobile service contract package. In addition, “company factors”, with about 18%
relative importance, were found to affect consumer choice of service provider
contracts. The principal issue affecting consumer choice decisions was
“switching cost”, which was the highest relative importance element of company
interrelated factors and found to influence mobile subscriber contracts choice
significantly. However, other company factors like signal strength and sales
outlet availability had no significant impact on consumer choices and ranked less
for consumer-choice priority. More attention is needed from scholars to study
the effect of other possible mobile phone contract dimensions from customers’
perspective.