SWITCHING FACTORS IN MOBILE SERVICE PROVIDERS: A QUALITATIVE STUDY FROM AN ARAB COUNTRY

摘要

Mobile Number Portability (MNP) is the process by which a subscriber keeps his mobile phone number if he decides to switch between different mobile service providers (MSP). In this case, customers will not worry to inform their network of friends and family members that their number has changed every time they switch. MNP became effective in Kuwait on June 16, 2013 to increase competitiveness among MSPs. Many past studies focused on reasons that push customers to switch to different technologies, including MSPs and Internet service providers. However, these studies suffer from one main limitation; they lack of rationale and rigor in the research methodology implementations. Accordingly, these studies focused on a subset of factors without providing the rationale for their choice. To fill in this gap, this study investigates the drivers and obstacles that influence the switch of customers to other MSPs in Kuwait using a qualitative study that involves two different samples: Students (86) and non-students (137). This study succeeded to show 16 switching factors that are considered as push or pull customer to switch/stay with their current MSP. It is expected that study results will advance our knowledge to understand this complex process, and orient toward future studies.