Literature Review

Mobile Phone’s can now be associated within the first pyramid of Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs.
They have excelled so much that majority of our life’s chores and tasks, ranging from eating,
travelling, working, academics, entertainment and maintaining relationships can be done by just
a mobile phone. Being a commodity, which is available in the free market, there are many
stakeholders amongst which the two most important ones are Brands and consumers. Brands
make sure to have a product up on market which is up to date, and satisfies their consumers
needs and want. Consumers on the other hand want a product which matches their different sets
of attributes and preferences. The big question which arises is why do consumers switch between
Mobile Phone brands. There are multiple relevant in-depth studies about the consumer switching
behavior and factors, which affect the behavior of consumers. These include factors which
motivate and demotivate consumers from switching between brands. The needs of smartphone
users always change rapidly due to the advancement of new technology. That’s why the brand
switching behavior of the user is increasing dramatically day by day due to product price,
innovative features of the new smartphone, social influence, specifications and customer
satisfaction. This study will further focus on identifying factors influencing consumer switching
behavior.

Brand Loyalty

Behavioral approach has changed to cognitive and attitude approach. Brand loyalty is the
behavioral intention of customer towards some definite brand. It approaches operational loyalty
in many ways, initially through the real usage of the particular brand. This approach measure
quantity and repeated purchasing of the brand (Lin et al., 2000; Veloutosou et al., 2004).
(Ehrenberg 1998) to find out specific patterns built by frequent buying or heavy purchasing
assisted by different marketing means.

Brand loyalty is a concept that has attracted considerable scholarly attention from marketing
practitioners and academics (Worthington, Russell-Bennett, & Härtel, 2010). Brand loyalty
consists of a consumer’s commitment to repurchase or otherwise continue using the brand and
can be demonstrated by repeated buying of a branded product over another (Farhat & Khan,
2011). Academic interest in brand loyalty reveals that brand loyalty is a multidimensional
construct. For instance, brand loyalty has been empirically examined from brand personality
perspective (Roy, Khandeparkar, & Motiani, 2016), consumer brand experiences (Iglesias,
Singh, & Batista-Foguet, 2011), brand communities (Kamboj & Rahman, 2016), brand equity
(Guzmán, 2012), and brand switching behavior (Al-Kwifi & Ahmed, 2015). (Kokkiadi &
Blomme, 2013) addressed factors which affected consumers’ intention to stay with a brand. It
aimed to discover the extent to which consumers were influenced by age, satisfaction, brand
commitment, the length of the consumer decision process, social groups, and user experience,
and brand perception. Results indicated that, compared with other variables, brand commitment
explained a remarkable part of the variance. The factors which influence the level of loyalty
between a brand and a consumer are spread over a variety of nature.

Brand Switching

Despite brand loyalty being there, brand switching may occur due to an increase or decrease in
devotion of a customer or the willingness to purchase other brands over time. Supported by
Trivedi and Morgan (1996) as well as Klein (2001) where many examples were stated in which
loyal customers switched towards other brands. Consumer behavior is the emotional process that
customers hold in identifying need, determining the means to resolve these needs and making
buying decisions. Motivation through extrinsic and intrinsic factors also affects brand switching.
The major roles in intrinsic motivation are through choices and varieties (McAlister and
Pessemier, 1982) or attribute satiation (Zuckermann, 1979). Also, consequential behavior can
also be the effect by curiosity (Sheth and Raju, 1974). Teenagers and young adults usually easily
switch between brands depending on limited income. Researches have triggered many factors
were price, variety, specifications and even packaging has affecting behaviors. (Ness et al., 2002;
Dick et al., 1996; Veloutosou et al., 2004). The consumers preferences and expectations should
vary from time to time. This research is going to examine variables such as product price,
product features, brand image and social influence that impact on the customer satisfaction for
the brand switching behavior. (Eze & Lee, 2012) conceptualized factors which can influence the
intention of a consumer to purchase a mobile phone. Findings from this study could enable firms
to reconstruct their firm's strategy to move ahead of the competition curve in the market.
(Runturambi & Tumewu, 2014) analyzed the simultaneous and partial effect of advertisement
and promotion on brand switching behavior of mobile phone providers. The promotion had a
positive and significant impact on the brand switching behavior of mobile phone providers. It is
clear that consumer’s primarily value price along with mobile phone features as the most
important variable amongst all, and it also acts as a motivational force which influences them to
go for a mobile phone.

Brand switching is a situation where a brand loses one loyal customer to a competitor. This
happens when a shopper changes their buying behavior, choosing deliberately to purchase
another brand instead of their usual choice. This brand switching can be be temporary, or it even
be long-lasting, especially for products that last longer or those from which switching away isn’t
that feasible. After analyzing these definitions one can conclude whether switching is a process
or decision, switching behavior certainly includes ending a relationship with one product by
stopping purchasing the products and establishing the same relationship with another
manufacturer of the same category.

Customer Satisfaction & Retention

Service quality as explained by Zeithaml (1988) is “the opinion of customers about the general
dominance of goods.” Gronroos (1988) explained that apparent quality is considered good when
the skilled quality of customers perception meets the predictable quality from the brand being
offered. It motivates customers by providing them with reasons to purchase and enhance value
by equipping the brand with separation and prominent positioning among competitor’s brands.

(Singh, 2009) understood the variation in the importance given by different age and gender
groups to the selected factors while buying mobile handsets in India. The study concluded that
the mobile handset users of the age group of 18-30 years were less price-sensitive than
consumers of other groups; rather they considered physical appearance, brand, value-added
features, and core technical features’ more important than users of any other age groups. (Hassan
Jawad Soomro, 2013) helped to understand the overall purchase behavior of this segment of
consumers. The results concluded that a large number of respondents preferred to purchase the
mobile phone handset with value-added facilities like a camera, large screen, familiar brand, and
low price. (Heikki Karjaluoto, 2005) studied consumers’ choice criteria in mobile phone markets
by studying factors that influenced intention to acquire new mobile phones on one hand and
factors that influenced mobile phone change on the other. It was found that although the choice
of a mobile phone was a subjective choice situation, some general factors seemed to guide the
choices. (Mohan Kumar & Dinesh Kumar, 2012) studied the factors that influenced the
consumer to purchase Mobile Phones as well as the factors for satisfaction/dissatisfaction which
might lead to brand switching in mobile phones. The consumer buying a variety of mobile
phones which satisfy his wants and they were always influenced by his purchasing activities by
some considerations which led him to select a particular brand or a particular store that is
preferred to others (Haider, Jan Kakakhel, Ihteshman, & Agha) studied the factors that contribute
to the switching behavior of professionals and students while purchasing a cell phone. The
research explored different reasons, why the consumer switches their cell phones from the
existing ones the analysis of the research clearly showed that mainly the factor which was
involved for the customers to change their cell phones was ‘technology’.

Product quality is the collection of features and characteristics of a product that

contribute to its ability to meet a given requirement by the user. Perceived product quality
signifies the intangible and tangible perception of consumers towards a product. Perceived
product quality is considered a prerequisite to consumer behavioral intention in both goods and
services markets. Understands quality as a degree to which satisfaction is met, measured by a set
of inherent signs. The importance of quality is emphasized by many researchers as the basis on
which firms’ signs. The signs. The, and markets are transformed by quality. A consumer who
switches or switchers are customers who have no loyalty to any specific product. Switching
behavior results in ‘the loss of the future revenue for a firm. On the other hand, high perceived
product quality can retain and attract both current and new customers and even draw customers
of low-quality competitors to their own favorite products. Perceived product quality can create
customer satisfaction considered a prerequisite for customer loyalty which has a positive impact
on reducing for customer consumers.

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