Abstract:
This study sought to establish factors that determine consumers’ patronage to mobile phone service providers in Kenya with a specific focus on Safaricom Kenya Ltd. Safaricom has faced intense competition in recent years in the Kenyan mobile phone market due to entry of other service providers in the industry. The competition has been mainly price based with competitors emphasizing on price reductions. While Kenyans generally exhibit price sensitive buying behaviour, in this case, they are behaving contrary to expectations. This study, therefore, sought to determine why this seeming contradiction. The main objective of this study is to identify factors that determine consumer patronage to mobile phone servicem providers in Kenya, with a case of Safaricom. Earlier researches in the mobile telephone sector with regards to patronage carried out in Nigeria and University of Malaysia found; customer satisfaction, service quality, brand image and switching cost are determinant factors to patronage. This study therefore, sought to establish if there exists an effect of switching costs, service quality, consumer satisfaction and brand image on consumer patronage to Safaricom Kenya ltd. The study employed descriptive research design. Sampling was done using snowball method. The sample size was of 180 respondents .Data was collected from a sample of mobile telephone subscribers in four major towns in Kenya: Nairobi, Kisumu, Mombasa and Nakuru. The clusters were further divided into three categories based on social classes depending on their disposable incomes (Lower, Middle and Upper classes). Data was collected using a structured questionnaire with close ended questions. The data collected was edited, coded and analyzed using SPSS package. Descriptive statistics such as the means and standard deviations was calculated to summarize the data. Regression analysis was also done to establish if there was a relationship among variables. Regression analysis results showed a significant effect on customer patronage by service quality, switching cost and customer satisfaction. However, the relationship between, customer patronage and brand
image was not significant at 5% level of significance. The findings of this study are expected to assist both the telecommunication companies and corporate brand-management teams to better understand the value of service quality, significant switching cost and customer satisfaction in getting service and product patrons. This research was only able to explain patronage in the mobile phone sector by 79.4%.there is a 20.6% cause for patronage that was not explained. Future researchers should try to find out what the 20.6% is composed of.
