Consumers’ Attitude towards Brand Switching: A Study on Telecommunication Sector in Bangladesh

Abstract

This study is conducted empirically for measuring consumers’ attitude towards brand switching on telecommunication sector in Bangladesh. A conceptual model has been developed based on two constructs and some factors. Telecommunication service related intrinsic and extrinsic constructs where five individual attributes are included (network availability, service quality, service charge strategies, brand image, offered value) and some influential factors (strong advertisement policy, huge offering packages, perception about network coverage, FnF tariff, perception about age of the consumer, profession of the consumer, marital status and user satisfaction level about the current usable SIM , call rate, SMS charge, income, and age of the consumer ) are considered for the final study. Tricomponent Attitude Model has been applied to find out the attitude formation towards telecommunication sector. A descriptive analysis technique (say, arithmetic mean) is used to find out the weighted average of intrinsic & extrinsic attributes which are considered by consumer for receiving telecommunication service. Fishbein’s Multiattribute Attitude model has been used for measuring the overall attitudes of consumers’ toward telecommunication sector in Bangladesh, which could help for successful business operation, management, and long-term sustainability of attitude measurement in order to improve product or service quality as per consumer expectation level. Next guideline of this study was that the support of Markov Chain (Transition Probability) for assessing the brand switching tendencies of the consumer from one state to another, which could help to take right strategies for improving the brand quality of different service providing organization and to capture high market share by reducing the brand switching behavior of the consumer. After that binary logistic regression Model has been applied to find out the significance of the influential factors which are considered by the consumers for switching from one to another brand of telecommunication sector. A total of 840 respondents who have direct role for receiving telecommunication service are selected on the basis of stratified random sampling to fill up the questionnaires where some of the information gathered by using Likert and Semantic Differential scales. Data has been collected from students and different professional (Universities Teacher, Bankers, Corporate officers, Housewife, Government and Nongovernment employees) through a set of structured questionnaire. To measure the overall evaluation (ei) regarding the selected attributes for the specific firm rating scale ranging from extremely good to extremely bad (+3 to -3) was used and asked to encircle the point to express their opinion. The respondents were also asked through the Seven Point Likert scale ranging from 7 indicates very strongly believe, and 1 indicates very strongly disbelieve to know how strongly they believe that the individual firm contains the said attributes. The result of Tricomponent Attitude Model proved that the consumers of Grameenphone Ltd. are showed significantly positive feelings on the network availability, brand image and service quality dimensions (p<0.01). The score indicates that the service charge strategies and offered value of Grameenphone Limited are not up to the mark.