CUSTOMER ORIENTATION AND LOYALTY BEHAVIOUR OF USERS OF GLOBAL SYSTEM OF MOBILE TELECOMMUNICATION SERVICES

Abstract

This study examined customer orientation and loyalty behaviour of users of GSM services. The study adopted a descriptive research design and used questionnaire as the study instrument. Fifty six (56) management level staff of four (4) major GSM service providers in Rivers State were surveyed on a sample frame of fourteen (14) managers per firm. The Spearman’s rank order correlation was employed as the statistical tool for testing the direction and strength of the hypothesized relationships while the ordinary least squares (OLS) method of regression analysis was used to determine the effect of customer orientation on customer loyalty. All the statistical analyses were done with the aid of SPSS version 20.0. The study found that customer orientation has a positive and statistically significant relationship with customer loyalty, with positive word-of-
mouth posting the strongest relationship with customer orientation. The study concludes that customer orientation is an imperative for customer loyalty and that customer loyalty expressed as positive word-of-mouth and customer retention depends on how customer oriented a firm is; and thus recommends that GSM service providers that seek to retain their existing customers and also benefit from their loyalty behaviours such as positive word-of-mouth should seek to determine the customers’ current and future needs with a view of satisfying them better than competitors, and that these service providers must look to customer orientation as strategic imperative to gain edge competitive edge.