Customer satisfaction on international direct dialing prepaid call cards market in Sri Lanka: A statistical analysis

Abstract

Attached

Satisfying customers is an essential elem ent in staying in the business market in the global competition of the modem world. Hence, this is a key factor to the profitability of a successful business. Therefore, companies should obtain a better understanding of the importance of the customer satisfaction. International Direct Dialing (ID D ) plays a major role in the telecommunication industry in Sri Lanka as various ID D services are available for the customers. Therefore, at present the prepaid ID D call card market is one of the most competitive areas in the telecommunication industry in Sri Lanka. This research mainly focused on identifying the association among demographic variables: gender, age group, marital status and em ploym ent status with customer satisfaction variables, induding quality, perceived value, custom er loyalty and customer support and also with overall customer satisfaction to identify the factors affecting the ID D prepaid call card market. The required data w ere collected using a structured questionnaire through the purposive random sampling method with a sample size of 222. T o attain customer satisfaction, five different brands of prepaid ID D call cards w ere used. The chi-square analysis for 2-way categorical data confirmed that the customer satisfaction with ID D prepaid cards was not significantly influenced by demographic variables. Each of the individual customer satisfaction variables was positively correlated with overall customer satisfaction at five percent significant level. Furtherm ore, the study revealed that all four variables: perceived quality, perceived value, custom er loyalty and customer support have a positive significant effect on the level of custom er satisfaction. Further, the results of the factor analysis suggest that the six customer satisfaction variables can be explained by three common factors: Custom er Loyalty, Value for M oney and User Friendliness. The percentage of overall custom er satisfaction of the ID D prepaid call cards is 93.2% , irrespective of any demographic variables