Research On The Influencing Factors Of Customer Loyalty-a Study In The Mobile Communication Market

Once the concept of customer loyalty put forward, it has being attracting extensive attentionfrom both the academic world and business domain. Although there are many related researches,systemic studies on the factors of customer loyalty are still needed greatly, especially for someparticular industry and special background. With the significant reduction in traditional voicebusiness and the announcement of4G license, we made a big step on the road to Big Data Time. Asa result, the competition between telecom operators becomes fiercer and fiercer. They all introducea variety of marketing projects to draw attention from customers. The study is just carried out in thisspecial background. It picks China Mobile as an example aimed at the mobile communicationmarket, trying to analyze the influencing factors of customer loyalty and the dimensions of thesefactors, finding out the key factors and key dimensions, which can give the telecom operators someinspiration in management which is of great practical significance.In this paper it firstly reviews quite a lot researches at home and abroad about customer loyalty,finding out four main influencing factors, including customer value, customer satisfaction,relationship trust and switching cost. Secondly, it analyzes the current situation and characteristicsof Chinese mobile telecommunication market. On this basis, the author builds up a model and putforward some related hypothesis combining with previous researches. The results of hypothesistesting shows that the four factors mentioned before has positive influence on customer loyalty.Among them, customer value has the greatest influence, switching cost ranks the second, customersatisfaction is number three, and the effect of relationship trust is the minimal one. Customer valueis related with customer satisfaction, while customer satisfaction affects relationship trust. Besides,the dimensions of the factors are also proved. Customer value is divided into functional value,emotional value, brand value and perceived sacrifice. Among them, the first one and the last oneaffect mostly. Customer satisfaction includes telecom security, after-sales support, staff quality,customer care and product features. Telecom security and customer care are not so important as theothers. Relationship trust can be divided into chronicity, reliability, interpersonal relationships andcorporate reputation. Reliability has the greatest significance on relationship trust. Switching costhas six dimensions, including opportunity cost, risk cost, searching and assessing cost, study cost,organization cost and sunk cost. Among them, the first one and the last one affect mostly. Finally, the author puts forward some management suggestions according to the results, which provides acertain reference on rearing and managing customer loyalty in the mobile communication market.