When Customer base is not loyalty! : Differences in the Consumers' Appraisal of Performance of Mobile Telecommunications Service Providers in Port Harcourt

Reports from both local and international telecommunications agencies attest that Nigerian telecommunications industry is the fastest growing in Africa and one of the fastest growing in the world. Currently, the sector boasts of about 157 million active subscribers being serviced by four dominant operators. However, there have been strident calls by consumers to the regulatory agencies to apply sanctions to the operators as a result of persistent poor quality of service. As a matter of fact, all the service providers do not deliver uniform level of service. This study is therefore aimed at examining the differences in the consumers’ appraisal of the quality of service and offerings of the service providers. SPSS 24 was employed in the analysis with analytical tools such as analysis of variance (ANOVA) and T-Test. Our study found that having large customer base does not translate to customer loyalty. Additionally, women subscribers were more emotionally responsive to the value-based offerings than the men as older subscribers were more satisfied than younger subscribers. Theoretically, our study extends the debate on the differences between customer retention and customer loyalty in the context of an emerging market. It is recommended that managers should focus on customer loyalty which has a more profitable longrun effect for the firm.nonPeerReviewe