Intentional loyalty and consumer behavior in the mobile phone market: the role of contextual and individual influences

Abstract

The understanding of loyalty antecedents has been a challenge for most Marketing researchers. Due to technological advances, significant churn of consumers and open carrier’s portability, the mobile phone market is considered an important field of study for loyalty. This paper aims to identify the antecedents of loyalty in the mobile phone market, applying traditional models cited in the classic loyalty literature, as satisfaction, commitment, quality, change costs and inertia. In the other hand, this research considered simultaneously the influences of functional and psychological involvement of the consumer as antecedents of loyalty, enabling a broader discussion. This work also proposes to verify the impacts of the contextual elements (negotiation and contract renewal conditions) on the consumer’s loyalty. A survey was accomplished, with 270 respondents. The results revealed that satisfaction and quality have important impacts on intentional loyalty, but no impact on behavioral loyalty (bill, churn rate and dispersion). The importance of this study refers to its contribution to explain the declared (behavioral) loyalty in contrast with intentional loyalty, as the inclusion of contextual and individual elements in the hypothetical loyalty models.