Factors Affecting Brand Loyalty of Telecom Operators in Pakistan

Abstract

In our country telecom companies are highly engaged in providing quality services to their customers primarily for a high market share and state of the art customer experience. Brand loyalty and customer satisfaction is the key performance indicator of telecom industry. If a customer is satisfied with his or her mobile network, ultimately it affects the brand value of that network. This ideology has led incumbent companies to improve quality standards and increase their customer base through additional spectrum license purchases and cellular network expansions. As we know, with the increase in data requirement of internet consumers in Pakistan people have had a mix impression of customer services and network coverage. This varying feedback is by virtue of the size and nature of network footprint each operator possesses in different geographical terrains of Pakistan. One major observation generally has been the strength of few operators in rural capacity areas while the immense success of other operators in Urban market surroundings. The question being why so disparity even though when mobile consumers are on the constant rise in Pakistan. This perception caught attention especially with the auction of 3G/4G licenses in Pakistan which knocked doors onto untapped potential in technology markets but indirectly avoided the suffering of poor experience customers in geographical markets. Majority of the consumers do not go into specifics rather they consider competitor networks being more efficient and sincere towards bringing a productive change in the mobile landscape of Pakistan. However, this may not be the case and the practical cause of variation in network performance revolves around the fact that other operators cash on the competitive advantage whether it is the mega investment that your parent telecom company can inject into the subsidiary through foreign direct investment; the favorable frequency allotted to some operators from licensed authority which is customer centric in terms of non-prone environmental conditions and cost effective solutions; the priorities operators assign to either the network experience or customer experience; the value for money offered by the operator; the sales pitch opted by the network whether it is for premium experience, best effort experience, high data requirement compared to voice usage, maximum connectivity and most important brand loyalty. It is important for telecom companies to have a detailed know how of the method to study brand loyalty. The methodology behind studying brand loyalty is basically narrowing down the factors P a g e 7 | 73 or the attributes/variables that shall govern the brand loyalty. These attributes or variables are some way or the other customer centric because at the end of the day brand loyalty is determined by consumer buying pattern in response to the services and cost delivered and charged to them respectively. Hence it can be safely said that the target market to study when measuring brand loyalty are the consumers who are regularly involved in sale/purchase of branded products. Their regular interaction depicts that they predominantly have a preference of product, place, price and promotion to select their relevant brand for purchasing and then continue with it for a considerable amount of time.