Asia Pacific Journal Of Marketing & Management Review

Ramulu Bhukya ¹, Sapna Singh ¹

Affiliations
1 School of Management Studies, University of Hyderabad, IN

Abstract

The Indian telecommunication (here onwards telecom) sector has plethora of Branded services providers. Though the services are homogenous, the element of differentiation is introduced by branding them. With the advent of liberalization in Indian telecom sector, drastic changes have taken place in the form of cut-throat competition among telecom brands in retaining existing customer base besides acquiring new ones. It is observed that after implementation of recent telecom policies in India, the overall scenario of telecom sector has been changed. The marketers are anxious and curious to understand and unravel the brand preference of subscribers in order to control brand switchers by providing customized services. This study is undertaken with a view to know the brand preference of students while choosing particular cellular service provider in Hyderabad city. The reason behind selecting students as the focus of study is that the student market is homogeneous and so reduces the impact of non-controllable confounding variables (Homburg and Koschate, 2004, and Matzler et al., 2006) and their consumption behaviours and perceptions resemble that of the typical users (Lim and Quester, 2003; Grimm, 2005; Hayes et al., 2006; O‟Cass and Grace, 2004). The findings of this study are; Network Coverage, tariff plans and customer services are the prime attributes considered by students while choosing particular service provider and Friends and Advertisement are the major factors which influence respondents to choose particular service providers.

Keywords

Brand Preference, Cellular Service Providers, Telecom Brands, Attributes, Factors

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