Challenges in the Era of Globalization - iaabd

Proceedings of the 12th Annual Conference © 2011 IAABD
Trends in Customer Retention
From the study, it was evident that though customers considered the services of MTN to be unreliable,
majority (58%, n = 85) were willing to stay with the company for a longer period of three years or more
(Figure 4). This was so because reliability of service was not the major concern for customers at the time
of the study. Instead, “tangibility”, “empathy”, “assurance”, and “responsiveness” were more important
and since customers perceived MTN to be engaging in them, majority stuck with the company over the
long hall. However, MTN is not attracting many new customers as is evident in Figure 4 where only 23%
(n = 34) of the customers have been with company for one year or less. This could be attributed to the
fact that many competing companies have entered the telecommunication industry and thus, giving
customers’ opportunities to make choices regarding quality of service including reliability of service. It is
also possible customers who have been with the company for longer periods may not feel motivated
enough to switch business due to possible loss of their contacts. Perhaps the introduction of the muchawaited
mobile phone number portability will solve that problem for customers and motivate to work on
providing more reliable services as a means of retaining customers.
Figure 4. Length of Customer Relationship with MTN
Influence of Service Quality on Customer Retention
The regression analysis of service quality components on customer retention is reported in the coefficients
Table, (Table 2). It can be inferred from the results that two (2) out of the five (5) service quality
dimensions are significantly and positively related to customer retention. They are “responsiveness” and
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