Service quality and customer switching behavior in China's mobile phone service sector

Journal of Business Research 66 (2013) 1161–1167

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Journal of Business Research

Service quality and customer switching behavior in China's mobile phone service sector☆ Dapeng Liang a, Zhenzhong Ma b,⁎, Liyun Qi c a b c

School of Management, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, Heilongjiang, China Odette School of Business, University of Windsor, 401 Sunset Avenue, Windsor, Ontario, Canada N9B 3P4 School of Management, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, Liaoning, China

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history: Received 1 July 2011 Received in revised form 1 November 2011 Accepted 1 December 2011 Available online 9 June 2012 Keywords: China Mobile phone service Service market Service quality Switching behavior

a b s t r a c t Service quality and customer switching behavior are among the most important factors that affect service companies' market share and profitability, yet they remain understudied in China's service sectors. This study surveys 400 customers to explore the perceived importance of various aspects of service quality and customer switching behavior in China's mobile phone service sector. The study identifies the following seven critical factors, listed in descending order of influence, that cause customers to switch mobile phone service providers: core service failure, high price, ethical problems, competition, inconvenience, service encounter failure, and influence from family/friends/group. The paper concludes with implications of the findings for service marketing and for multinational companies expanding into Chinese service markets. © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Research on service and service marketing shows that customer retention, not merely customer acquisition, is crucial for service firms (Berry, 1980; Keaveney, 1995). While service quality, relationship quality, and overall service satisfaction are useful in improving customers' intentions to stay with a service firm, what causes customers to switch from one service provider to another remains relatively understudied (Bell, Auh, & Smalley, 2005; Keaveney, 1995; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1988). Understanding customer switching behavior is important because a customer's switching behavior results in the loss of the future revenue stream from that customer. In particular, switching by a service customer is a loss for a firm's high-margin sector of its customer base. The costs associated with acquiring new customers, including account setup, credit checks, and promotional expenses, can be as much as five times the costs of customer retention efforts (Keaveney, 1995; Peters, 1988). Operating costs also associate with the firm's identifying the needs of new customers as well as new customers' becoming familiar with the procedures of the firm. ☆ The authors thank Michael X. Song and two anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments on earlier versions of this paper. This study was partially supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant #: 71073040) and a Social Science & Humanity Grant of the Ministry of Education (Grant# 09YJC790061). ⁎ Corresponding author. Tel.: + 1 519 253 3000x4251; fax: + 1 519 973 7073. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (D. Liang), [email protected] (Z. Ma), [email protected] (L. Qi). 0148-2963/$ – see front matter © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2012.03.012

Social values and norms deeply embedded in their cultural background can affect customers' perceptions of service quality (Ladhari, Pons, Bressolles, & Zins, 2011; Laroche, 2011). Thus, in the context of an increasingly globalized world economy, cross-cultural differences in service quality and customer switching behavior deserve more attention from both the academia and practitioners in service industries (Chang & Chen, 2007; Choi, Kim, & Kim, 2011; Laroche, 2011; Patterson & Smith, 2003). The complexity of the Chinese market creates an ideal venue for academic research on service quality and service innovation and other relevant variables in China's service market (Ladhari et al., 2011; Mazaheri, Richard, & Laroche, 2011; Peng, Lu, Shenkar, & Wang, 2001; Ramasamy, Goh, & Yeung, 2006; Roy, Walters, & Luk, 2001; Selmer, 2002; Tsui, 2006; Whetten, 2009; Zhou, Su, & Bao, 2002). Following three decades of reform and rapid economic development, China is on its way to becoming the next economic superpower. China is the world's most populous nation, second largest economy, and the largest recipient of foreign direct investment. With over three trillion dollars in foreign currency reserves, China becomes multinational companies' favorite emerging market destination. Chinese culture is a collectivistic culture, quite different from the individualistic cultures in the West, and group harmony and group loyalty are socially desirable (Hofstede, 2001; Peng et al., 2001). China's economy is experiencing a difficult transition from a planned economy to a market economy, wherein the concepts of service and service quality are relatively new to customers. As a result, on the one hand, Chinese customers have more concerns about product quality and brand loyalty, but less about service quality and service encounters. On the other hand, the economic development and the

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extensive influence from the West lead Chinese customers to become more aware of the quality of the service they receive. In addition, there are over 800 million mobile phone subscribers in China, where fierce competition exists among major mobile phone service providers for acquiring and retaining customers. Although Western scholars examine various aspects of customer switching behaviors from different perspectives (Bell et al., 2005; Burnham, Frels, & Mahajan, 2003; Jones, Mothersbaugh, & Beatty, 2000; 2002; Keaveney, 1995; Kerin, Varadarajan, & Peterson, 1992; Lam, Shankar, Erramilli, & Murthy, 2004; Lieberman & Montgomery, 1988), they place very little focus on service quality and customer switching behaviors in China's mobile phone service sector. The current study fills this research gap and provides insights into the brand switching behavior in the broader Chinese service sector. The results of this study will help to better understand China's service industry and enrich the knowledge about cross-cultural differences in service quality and service innovation (Laroche, 2011; Luo & Hassan, 2009; Song, Di Benedetto, & Song, 2000; Song, Di Benedetto, & Zhao, 1999). 2. Conceptual framework Research on service quality and service marketing reveals a variety of reasons why customers choose to stay with their service providers, resulting in a broad array of literature on service quality, customer retention, and customer switching behavior (Bell et al., 2005; Keaveney, 1995; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985; Parasuraman et al., 1988). For example, Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988) provide a conceptual model of service quality and develop an instrument (SERVQUAL) for measuring service quality. While their research bases solely on customers in the West, their pioneering work provides theoretical guidance for the investigation of crosscultural differences of service quality and related customer behaviors in an international context. Research shows that perceptions of service quality, overall satisfaction, and service encounters affect customer loyalty and repatronization in various locations (Keaveney, 1995; Kelley, Hoffman, & Davis, 1993; Rust & Zahorik, 1993). Generally speaking, research in this field focuses on two major areas: (i) why customers stay with a service provider, and (ii) what are the switching costs and barriers. In investigating why customers stay with a service provider, LaBarbera and Mazursky (1983) use a panel study to demonstrate the importance of satisfaction and dissatisfaction in explaining the behavior of repeat purchasers. They report that satisfaction level is a significant factor for customer loyalty formation. Gonul, Peter, and Sugawara (1996) measure the correlation between purchase timing of households, repeat purchase, and the tendency to switch brands and conclude that different product characteristics influence the tendency to switch: when the purchase interval gets longer, consumers are more likely to switch, and when the product is essential and customers buy the product regularly, loyalty would continue. Athanassopoulos (2000) explores the dynamic relationship between customer satisfaction, service, and customer loyalty and suggests that customer satisfaction has a positive effect on preventing customer switching behavior in the banking industry. Roos, Edvardsoon, and Gustafsson (2004) define three kinds of triggers for switching behavior: situational triggers, influential triggers, and reactional triggers. Situational triggers include demographic changes or changes in the work situation; influential triggers are factors associated with the competitive situation such as competitors' efforts to increase their market share; and reactional triggers include critical incidents in interactions between customers and service providers. Based on this typology, they identify major switching determinants in various sectors, including banking, insurance, telecommunications, supermarket, and social insurance (Roos et al., 2004). A number of scholars examine switching costs and barriers and their effects on customers' decisions to stay with a particular service

provider (Chen & Hitt, 2002; Colgate & Lang, 2001; Dick & Basu, 1994; Murray, 1991; Nilssen, 1992; Patterson & Smith, 2003). For example, Kim, Klinger, and Vale (2003) define switching costs as the costs associated with changing suppliers or service providers for a variety of economic and psychological reasons. Lam et al. (2004) divide switching costs into five categories, including money, effort, time, new technology, and uncertainty, while Bell et al. (2005) argue that switching costs include sunk costs, search costs, and setup costs. Kim, Park, and Jeong (2004) combine previous research on customer retention and customer loyalty and contend that switching barriers consist of switching costs, the attractiveness of alternatives, and interpersonal relationships. Jones et al. (2000) argue that the loss of a personal relationship with service providers is a form of switching barrier, and Dowling and Uncles (1997) find that frequent flyer programs form an economic switching barrier. While the literature on service marketing and service management suggests that a number of factors relate to service switching behavior, the direct application of these findings in the global marketing and service management has limitations because prior work focuses on these issues in a Western context, not directly on service switching in an international context. Further, low service quality and dissatisfaction represent some of the reasons why customers switch service in the West, but they do not account for all of the reasons. Convenience, price, and availability might enhance customer satisfaction and ultimately affect customers' behavioral intentions (Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Keaveney, 1995). In particular, service failure and dissatisfaction may not have the same effect as in the West in a collectivistic culture where people often constrain their own feelings and emotions (Hofstede, 2001), and thus are less likely to switch service providers as a reaction to service failure or dissatisfaction. In her grounded model of customer switching behavior, Keaveney (1995) proposes eight causal variables that may lead customers to switch service providers across service sectors, including inconvenience, price, service encounter failure, core service failures, competition, and involuntary factors. The current study moves the research on customer switching behavior one step further to test its validity in a Chinese context and to explore customer switching behavior in China's mobile phone service sector in order to extend the understanding of service management and service innovation in a global context (Song, Song, & Di Benedetto, 2009; Uncles & Kwok, 2009). 3. Method This study compiles a list of factors that may affect customers' switching behavior in China's mobile phone service sector from the grounded model proposed by Keaveney (1995) on why customers switch service providers and other studies on customer retention and service quality (Cronin & Taylor, 1992; Lee & Feick, 2001; Parasuraman et al., 1985, 1988; Patterson & Smith, 2003; Roos et al., 2004). To verify the validity and relevance of these factors, this study conducts in-depth interviews of a randomly selected sample of 10 representatives of company subscribers and 10 individual subscribers of the mobile phone service in the Liaoning Province, a populous region and industry center in the northern part of China. After incorporating the feedback collected in these interviews, this study creates a questionnaire tailored to collect information about customer switching behavior in China's mobile phone service market. 3.1. Pilot study To further test the validity of the questionnaire, this study conducts a small-scale pilot test using two mobile phone service retailers in Liaoning Province. The pilot study distributes about 200 copies of the questionnaire with180 copies returned, for a response rate of 90%. Based on the psychometric properties of the questionnaire in the pilot study, a revised questionnaire comprising 24 items is ready

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for use in this study with each item representing one reason why customers may switch their mobile phone service provider. Participants will answer on a 5-point Likert scale to what extent a given reason affects their decisions in switching mobile phone service providers, with 1 representing the least important influence and 5 representing the most important influence. 3.2. Procedure The main study collects the data with the revised questionnaire. This study first asks participants whether they have the experience of switching mobile phone service providers, and only those who have brand switching experiences participate in this study. This study distributes the questionnaire to four hundred individual mobile phone service customers in the Liaoning Province, with 341 useful questionnaires returned, for a response rate of 85.3%; 46.9% of the resulting sample are male, with a variety of occupational backgrounds and different education levels (please see Table 1 for the demographic data of the sample). 4. Results and discussions Table 2 shows the results of a factor analysis on the 24 different variables that may cause customers to switch mobile phone service providers in China (using the SPSS 18.0, with the principal component analysis and varimax rotation method). The factor analysis produces seven different categories of reasons why Chinese mobile phone service subscribers switch services, with 63.4% variance explained. In descending order of influence, these categories are: core service failure, high price, ethical problems, competition, inconvenience, service encounter failure, and family/friends/group impact. 4.1. Major reasons for service switching among China's mobile phone services 4.1.1. Core service failure Core service failure is the most common reason why Chinese customers switch mobile phone services. Core service failure includes Table 1 The demographic data of participants. Characteristic Age 18 or younger 19–25 26–35 36–45 46 or older Occupation Public sector employees Professionals Managerial personnel Self-employed Company employees Students Retirees and others Gender Male Female Education Middle school or lower High school/vocational school College University or above Monthly income (RMB) 499 or below 500–999 1000–1499 1500–1999 2000 or above

Total (N)

Percentage (%)

9 165 90 40 37

2.6 48.4 26.4 11.7 10.9

20 21 4 87 82 78 49

5.9 6.1 1.2 25.5 24.0 22.9 14.4

160 181

46.9 53.1

94 111 95 41

27.6 32.6 27.8 12.0

109 112 74 22 24

32.0 32.8 21.7 6.5 7.0

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low signal quality in making or receiving calls, failure in delivering text messages, repeatedly sending the same text messages, sending spam text messages/calls, and imposing too many testing programs. The fact that failure to deliver promised services is the leading reason for Chinese customers to switch mobile phone services is consistent with the findings in the West and this result indicates the universal importance of service quality across the globe (Keaveney, 1995; Parasuraman et al., 1988). With the key product of mobile phone service providers being mobile phone service, core service failure is essentially a failure in product quality, which clearly indicates the utmost importance for mobile phone service providers to first focus on the quality of their delivered products if they want to succeed in the competition for Chinese service market. 4.1.2. High price High price is the second most common reason why Chinese customers switch mobile phone services. Although items for service prices, price deals, and affordable promotional packages all appear in the earlier version of the questionnaire, the pilot study shows that the most important of these reasons for customer switching behavior is high service price. The factor analysis supports this finding as well, with high price as the only one single-item factor among all the categories of service switching reasons. Compared with Keaveney's (1995) study of Western consumers, which finds that price is the third most common reason for switching services, Chinese customers seem to place more importance on price as the Chinese may be more sensitive to service price or service charge. Although the mobile phone gradually becomes an indispensable device for the majority of the Chinese population, mobile phone services are still relatively expensive for many Chinese customers who are struggling to make ends meet when they try to catch up with the West in their standards of living. 4.1.3. Ethical problems This category includes unethical, illegal, or other behaviors from service providers that deviate from social norms or imposes psychological annoyance on customers in order to obtain customers' compliance. For example, a service provider might continuously call or send text messages to remind the customers to pay the bill or a service provider charges the customer a high fee for temporarily stopping service. An interesting result is that the factor analysis classifies high fee for temporarily stopping service as an annoying behavior by service providers, rather than a price issue. This result may be because the charge for temporarily stopping service is not for using the service, but for not using the service. This practice deviates from the social norm of charging for service and is thus considered unethical, and thus further leads to customers' service switching to other service providers. 4.1.4. Competition With the rapid development in China's mobile phone market, the major competitors, including China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom, are all fighting for market share and profitability. These service providers continuously introduce attractive price packages and promotional deals in order to retain their own customers and attract more customers from their competitors, sometimes even resorting to price wars to improve their own positions in the market. These service providers may also offer better service packages or better products that provide special status and recognition that appeal to customers' sense of social status and identity. Compared with the findings of Keaveney (1995), where competition is the third least important category, competitive alternatives seem to play a more important role in Chinese customers' decisions to switch their service providers. This result may be due to the fact that Chinese mobile phone service users are more sensitive to service price and thus are more likely to switch to better deals from other service providers.

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Table 2 Factor analysis of service switching causes. Variable items

Factor loading 1

Service encounter failure 1. Bad attitudes from service personnel 2. Service personnel's unprofessional manners 3. Unresponsive to customer complaints 4. Cannot get support through the call center 5. Failure to deliver billing notice in a timely manner

2

3

4

5

6

0.76 0.72 0.65 0.64 0.51

Competition 1. Competitors have a better reputation 2. Ads from competitors impress me 3. Competitor products better fit in with my social status/identity 4. Competitors introduce better packages

0.77 0.70 0.69 0.66

Inconvenience 1. Insufficient number of retailers/kiosks 2. Limited methods/locations for bill payment 3. Short hours of operations at retailers 4. Long transaction processing time at retailers 5. Limited choices in prepaid phone cards

0.79 0.76 0.74 0.50 0.41

Core service failure 1. Sending the same text messages again and again 2. Failure in delivering text messages 3. Too many spam text messages/calls 4. Too many unnecessary testing programs 5. Low signal quality in making or receiving calls

0.76 0.66 0.63 0.50 0.49

Ethical problems 1. Keep calling/sending text messages to remind customers of bill payment 2. The fee for temporarily stopping mobile phone service is too high

0.66 0.62

Family/friends/group impact 1. Companies buy mobile services for employees 2. Influence from family/friends

0.67 0.67

Price 1. High price Variance (%) Eigenvalues

4.1.5. Inconvenience This category includes situations where customers feel the inconvenience in the product of a service provider, such as an insufficient number of retail locations/kiosks, limited methods of bill payment, long transaction processing times, short hours of operation, and limited choices of prepaid phone cards, which indicates the importance for service providers to build an extensive service network across the country and to implement more customer-oriented business practice in order to serve customers better. 4.1.6. Service encounter failure This category relates to the quality of the interactions between customers and the employees of the service firms, which is of immediate relevance to mobile phone service providers as well as other service firms. Service encounter failure includes bad attitudes from service firm personnel, the unresponsiveness to customers' complaints, the unprofessional manners in dealing with customers, and the failure of service providers' call centers to provide support. Compared with the results of Keaveney's (1995) study, where service encounter failure is the second most common reason for switching service providers in the West, service encounter failure is the second least important factor for Chinese customers. This result reveals the transitional nature of China's economic system which is changing from a planned economy mainly focusing on the quality of goods/ products to a market-centered economy focusing on both service and product quality. Chinese customers are less demanding with

7

0.89 26.04 6.25

9.80 2.35

7.19 1.72

6.11 1.47

5.32 1.28

4.63 1.11

4.27 1.03

regard to service quality and are thus less likely than their Western counterparts to switch service providers as a result of poor customer service encounter. 4.1.7. Family/friends/group impact This last category, also the least influential reason for switching behavior, refers to the influence that people experience from family, friends, and the companies where they work. In China, many mobile phone service providers introduce family plans or friend plans that offer cheaper prices for calls made among family members or friends who use the same service company or network. As a result, if a customer's family members or friends switch service providers, he or she may switch too. In addition, some companies purchase mobile phone service for their employees. As a result, if a company chooses to switch service providers, so will the employees. 4.2. The impact of demographic factors This study uses a one-way multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) to examine the impact of gender, age, education level, and monthly income on the perceived importance of various causes of customer switching behavior. The results show that the perceived importance of service encounter failure in switching decisions is greater for male customers than female customers (F = 4.85, p b .028). This finding reflects the fact that women are more tolerant and sympathetic in the Chinese society (Ma, 2010). No gender

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differences occur for any other category of customer switching behavior causes. Perception of family/friends/group influence on switching decisions varies among different age groups (F = 4.05, p b .003). In general, the influence of family/friends/group decreases as age increases, except for the 18-or-younger group who perceive the family/ friends/group impact as being weaker than the 45-or-younger group but stronger than the 46-or-older group. No age differences occur for any other category of service switching causes. The influence of service encounter failure and family/friends/ group impact becomes stronger as education level increases (F = 2.46, p b .033 and F = 2.95, p b .014, respectively), indicating that people with higher educational backgrounds are more sensitive to the quality of interactions with service personnel and the influence from the family/friends and the companies where they work; at the same time, the influence of high price decreases as educational level increases (F = 2.35, p b .041), which shows that people with higher educational background are less sensitive to service price in deciding whether to switch mobile phone service providers. Perception of the influence of service encounter failure on switching decisions also varies among different income levels (F = 3.24, p b .013). The lowest monthly income group (RMB 499 or below) and the highest monthly income group (RMB 2000 or above) both indicate service encounter failure has less influence in their service switching decisions than the other income groups. No significant differences occur for any other categories of service switching causes among different income groups, which is perhaps surprising given that high price is the second most common reason participants in this study give for switching services. But this may be an indicator that people at all income levels find high price an influential factor in their service switching decisions. 4.3. Discussion This study of service switching behavior in China's mobile phone service shows that core service failure, high price, and ethical problems of service providers are the top three factors that lead customers to switch service providers and that family/friends/group impact and service encounter failure are the least important factors. These results are similar to the findings on the perception of service and service quality in the West (Keaveney, 1995), and thus provide important insights for service marketing and service management practitioners in a global context. The results of this study also reveal some specific characteristics of the Chinese mobile phone service market and the perceived importance of different aspects of service quality that are important in global service marketing. First, core service failure is the most important factor that causes Chinese mobile phone service customers to switch service providers, very similar to that in the West (Keaveney, 1995). Such a consistent cross-cultural finding confirms the importance of the quality of the core service provided by service firms: the key to success for service firms in competition, whether domestic or global, is to focus on providing high-quality products (services) to their customers. Second, Chinese mobile phone customers rate high price as the second most influential factor in their service switching decisions, whereas Western customers consider service encounter failure to be the second most important factor, and high price the third most important factor (Keaveney, 1995). Interestingly, Chinese consumers rate service encounter failure as the second least important factor in their service switching decisions. This comparison shows that, on the one hand, while high price will lead to switching behavior both in the West and in China, Chinese customers in the mobile phone service sector are more sensitive to price, which is consistent with the differences in the standards of living between the West and China. On the other hand, service encounter failure is of low importance in

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China, indicating that the service market is still developing and customers' perception still focuses on product quality rather than on service quality. Third, this study shows that ethical problem is the third most important reason why Chinese customers switch service providers, but ethical problem is the second least important category for Western customers (Keaveney, 1995). This cross-cultural difference might be due to the fact that relatively fewer unethical incidents take place in the West in dealing with customers, and thus very few customers switch service providers because of ethical problems in the West. In addition, the impact of family/friends/group is not among the top categories of switching behavior causes for Western customers. In other words, the impact of family/friends/group is not as important in the West as in China. This result reflects a typical phenomenon in the collectivistic culture where families/friends and groups often play very important roles in people's everyday life (Hofstede, 2001; Ma & Jaeger, 2005).

4.4. Implications and conclusions The results of this exploratory study have important implications for researchers and practitioners in service marketing and service management in the international context. From a theoretical perspective, this study contributes to the literature of service quality and service innovation by extending the understanding of cross-cultural differences in the perceived importance of different aspects of service quality and their impact on service switching. The insight into why Chinese customers switch mobile phone service providers advances contemporary theory on service marketing by making the theory more robust to help understand service management in the global market. Future research would be useful in extending this perspective to understand Chinese service market and customer switching behavior to broaden the scope of service research and facilitate service innovation. The identification of seven major categories of customer service switching causes, including core service failure, high price, ethical problems, competition, inconvenience, service encounter failure, and family/friends/group impact, has important implications for service marketing and service innovation research. Service literature has largely focused on service quality, satisfaction, quality of relationship, and service design as antecedents of customer retention and customer loyalty (Keaveney, 1995). But this study shows that price, competition, ethical issues, and the impact of family/friends/group are also important to better understand customer defections from service firms, especially in a global context. The findings of this study also have important implications for practitioners in the fields of service innovation and service marketing and for marketing departments of multinationals that are expanding into Chinese service markets. The ranking of perceived importance of different causes of customer switching behavior suggests a variety of areas in which service practitioners might take action for service innovation in order to prevent customers from switching to other service providers. For instance, with core service failure as the most important cause for service switching in Chinese customers, a no-defect policy to deliver technically correct services for every customer would be effective in reducing customer switching and increasing customer retention in China. In addition, Chinese mobile phone service customers react strongly to ethical problems of service firms, an implication for which is that service firms should maintain high moral standards in dealing with Chinese customers to prevent customer defection. Chinese service firms largely ignore this aspect in the mobile phone sector where the few large service firms are often very arrogant in treating their customers. Service firms that do better in this aspect should be able to gain unique competitive advantage, an important step for service

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innovation and to gain the first-mover advantage (Kerin et al., 1992; Lieberman & Montgomery, 1988; Song et al., 2000). Another potential area service firms could focus on for innovative service marketing and management along with China's further move into a market economy is the service encounters and interactions between customers and service firms. Because the true concept of service, manifesting in the interactions between customers and service firms, is still evolving in the mobile phone services and many other service sectors in China, service firms in China's market could work on improving the quality of interactions between customers and service firms to form a sustainable advantage in retaining customers and improving customer loyalty. Managers and practitioners in service marketing should also note that Chinese customers in the mobile phone service sector may switch providers even if they are satisfied, as may be the case for customers who switch because of competition, family/friends/group impact, and sometimes price. The service literature points out that customers may stay with a service firm even after one or many dissatisfactory encounters, probably due to switching costs and different switching barriers, but future research should also investigate the issue of satisfied customers' switching behaviors, and explore what exact impact the Chinese market and institutional context have on the identified critical factors that affect Chinese customers' switching behaviors (Tsui, 2006; Whetten, 2009; Zhou et al., 2002). This study has limitations on the generalizability of the findings. First, this study collects the data from the mobile phone service sector in China and extension of the findings to other service markets is subject to validation. Future studies should extend this research by using samples from other service sectors. Second, this study collects the data only in the northern region of China. Customers from other parts of China could have different perceptions of service quality and causes for switching behavior. In addition, the income levels of the participants in this study are relatively low, which might attenuate the findings. Future research should include samples from higher income groups to learn more about the high-end market. Notwithstanding the qualifications in applying the findings, this exploratory study provides valuable insights for academia and for practitioners in the fields of service marketing and service management in a global context. The results suggest practical guidance for multinational companies expanding into the Chinese market. Further studies would be useful to refine and test these variables, including conceptualization and operationalization of the identified causes of service switching, experimentally modeling and testing the switching process, and identifying other relevant variables, in order to build a stronger knowledge base for service marketing and service innovation, as well as for examining the specific contextual effects on service innovation and global marketing in an international context. References Athanassopoulos, A. D. (2000). Customer satisfaction cues to support market segmentation and explain switching behavior. Journal of Business Research, 47(3), 191–207. Bell, S. J., Auh, S., & Smalley, K. (2005). Customer relationship dynamics: Service quality and customer loyalty in the context of varying levels of customer expertise and switching costs. Journal of Marketing Science, 33(2), 169–183. Berry, L. L. (1980). Services marketing is different. Business, 30(May), 24–29. Burnham, T. A., Frels, J. K., & Mahajan, V. (2003). Consumer switching costs: A typology, antecedents, and consequences. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 31(2), 109–126. Chang, Y. H., & Chen, F. Y. (2007). Relational benefits, switching barriers and loyalty: A study of airline. Journal of Air Transport Management, 13(2), 104–109. Chen, P. Y., & Hitt, L. M. (2002). Measuring switching costs and the determinants of customer retention in internet-enabled business: A study of the online brokerage industry. Information Systems Research, 13(3), 255–274. Choi, H., Kim, Y., & Kim, J. (2011). Driving factors of post adoption behavior in mobile data services. Journal of Business Research, 64(11), 1212–1217. Colgate, M., & Lang, B. (2001). Switching barriers in consumer markets: An investigation of the financial services industry. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 18(4), 332–347.

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