Study On The Impact Of Switching Costs On Customer Retention In Technology Standard Competition Market

Standard competition, as a new type of market competition, has special characteristics. Inthe market of technology standard competition with network effects, the installed base of users isa crucial factor to the success of technological standards. Thus, retaining existing customers andreducing customer defections is more effective than acquiring new customers. Based on theliterature review of standard competition, we find that scholars seldom study the influence ofstandards competition on consumers’ behavior, especially on how to retain customers. Therefore,combined with the special characteristics of technology standard competition market, this studyreviews the related literatures, discusses the direct effects of switching cost on customerretention and concludes factors that will influence the switching costs in standard competitionmarket, so as to provide marketing practice suggestions for the standard suppliers.This study selects the smartphone operating system market which has the typicalcharacteristics of standard competition market as the research background. We try to investigatethe consumers’ perceived switching costs and their loyalty behaviors, and then analyze thesurvey data by means of SPSS and AMOS statistics software. Within the constructed model of"Influencing factors-Switching costs-Customer retention”, we find the following conclusions.(1) The factors that affect customer switching costs are consist of technology standard factors(including technology standard complexity and technology upgradability) and consumer factors(including customer investment and customer experience), among which, technology standardcomplexity, technology upgradability, and customer investment have significant positiveinfluence on switching costs, but the customer experience presents negative correlation withswitching costs.(2) Due to special characteristics of technology standard competition market, thetechnology standard factors play a larger role in influencing customers’ switching costs.(3) Eachswitching cost is positively related with customer retention, especially the lost benefit cost whichimpacts the customer retention most. Finally, this study puts forward marketing strategies fortechnology standard suppliers based on different switching costs perspectives.