Factors that Influence Consumer Word-of-Mouth Promotion among Mobile Telecommunication Service Users in Malaysia

Competing in the new era of business that is characterized as highly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous, mobile telecommunication companies need to offer competitive products with competitive price. Since telecommunication services are quite synonymous, it is quite difficult to outperform others especially in the service offering. Having consumers who are willing to engage in extra role behaviour; i.e. word-of-mouth promotion, is regarded as an advantage for the company. The present study is undertaken to investigate factors that contribute to users' word-of-mouth promotion pertaining to telecommunication services. Data were collected from 405 telecommunication post-paid and prepaid users using online survey throughout Malaysia using convenience sampling technique. However, using factor analysis and normality test, the data collected were valid and representative of the population. Based on the results of multiple regression analysis, service quality, service availability and promotional packages play significant roles in determining users' word-of-mouth promotion. Price was found to be a non-significant predictor of users' word-of-mouth promotion. There are two main implications of the findings; first, mobile telecommunication service providers should focus on these three factors to promote their services to bigger audience. Second, price should not be used as a basis to compete with others since users do not consider price as an important factor that influences users' positive word-of-mouth promotion. Keywords: service quality; service availability; promotional package; price; word-of-mouth, ambassador
Introduction Conducting businesses in the present market condition characterized as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous requires organizations to not only satisfy customers but also engage them so that they are [...]