CONSISTENCY OF TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES ADVERTISED AND ACTUAL SERVICE PROVIDED BY THE PAKISTAN TELECOM SECTOR: A CRITICAL STUDY

Abstract

Purpose of the study: The research is conducted to check the consistency of telecom services advertised and actual services provided. Three constructs Manipulation, Deception and Reliability are used to evaluate the consistency Many researches has been done on telecom sector of Pakistan in different contexts like deception, customer satisfaction and consumer behavior, this study aimed to evaluate the consistency of telecom services advertised and actual services provided. Methodology: This is a descriptive research based on quantitative research design and makes use of primary data gathered from questionnaires answered by telecom users. The selected sample size of this research is 375. The data has been collected from all the cellular network users including students, business-owners, white and blue collared employees, and homemakers. To ensure more reliability in the results and accuracy of the analysis only 255 of the 375 responses were selected as the rest of the responses were not completed. Findings: Pearson correlation test is applied to derive the results and the findings conclude that the entire outline measuring constructs (Manipulation, Reliability, Deception) of the consistency of telecom services advertised and actual services provided in Pakistan telecom sector significantly pave the way for proving the fact that there is minimal consistency exists in telecom sector as the difference between the promised and provided coefficients are significant at p<10% and p<5% for all the constructs used to measure the consistency. The r values of Manipulation, Deception and Reliability are -.148, .127, -.168 respectively. Implications of the study: This research will be invaluable for any organization profit or non profit who wants to work in favor of customers for consumer rights protection and even for the telecom sector to understand the consumer behavior towards deception. The findings of this research can be helpful for the Telecom service providers to analyze that contribution of their advertisement in building customer relationship.