ABSTRACT
Prior to the advent of GSM in 2001, phone penetration was low to the verge of negligible. NITEL had the monopoly. But all that changed with the GSM revolution brought by the licensing of ECONET (now AIRTEL), MTEL, MTN and the later entry of GLO and 9MOBILE into the telecommunication industry. At first, all that was needed for marketing success was availability. Because the demand for phone was far more than the supply, these companies were on a roll, snapping subscribers after subscribers from phone starved State. With the fierce competition and the saturated market already, telecom operators must work hard to reduce cost, win new customers and most importantly retain the existing ones. Primary data used for this work which was sourced through questionnaire administered to customers of the four major telecommunication companies in Benin City (MTN, AIRTEL, GLOBACOM & 9MOBILE) residing in Benin City. The questions were close ended and used a 5-point Likert-scale. The sample consists of 250 mobile subscribers in Benin City, using a simple random sampling. The data obtained from the survey were analyzed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS), Version 22. The survey was restricted to subscribers using the four major GSM mobile phone operators. The study revealed that Brand loyal customers are prone to brand switch in response to changes in tariff of other brands and that there is a significant relationship between branding strategy and consumer loyalty in the Benin telecommunication industry. The researcher recommend that telecommunication firms should expand their network coverage, improve the quality of service their offer and provide better access to other networks within and outside Benin City. The industry should also improve their customer service and value-added
services, because the findings shows that consumers are not satisfied the quality of these factors. Telecommunication providers in Benin should be constantly involved in brand innovation and diversification, as to increase customer’s product choice. They must come up with friendly tariff in order to increase customer loyalty and reduce brand switch. Finally, that telecommunication providers in Benin must see branding strategy as a very important aspect of it marketing strategy and must be given a serious approach, because it go a long way to determines the success or failure of the brand offer to the market, the firm in question and it ability to achieve consumer loyalty.
CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background to the Study
As the telecom companies become increasingly more customer-centric and are much interested not just on acquiring new customers, but more importantly, delighting and retaining existing customers. This has added more costs in attracting new customers than retaining existing ones. But it should be realized that, it is more profitable retaining an old customer who is more likely to repurchase or re-use a company’s products/services and recommend them to others. Therefore, retaining an existing customer becomes a product of customer loyalty and value which in turn is a function of the level of customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction (Reichheld,
1996). Since the full liberalization of the sector in 2000 (Ndukwe, 2004), the industry has witnessed a tremendous increase in subscriber growth rate for all the mobile telecom operators. This growth trend could not be attributed to customer satisfaction alone; but fundamentally to the substantial growth in investment and expansion of network access during the past years. According to Rosenberg et al. (1984), it can cost as much as six times more to win a new customer than it does to keep an existing one.