Customer retention is an important field of study in maturing markets. Using the Canadian mobile phone market as an example, this paper studies the major motivators of customer retention and their interrelationships. The motivators have been discovered through a literature review. Once these relationships are found, they are weighted by their influence on customer retention, and strategies from four Canadian mobile service providers are evaluated. The complete surveys and provider strategies are included as appendices.
The motivators of customer retention are divided into three dimensions: Cost, Product Quality, and Customer Experience. Within the dimensions are 8 criteria: Service Price and Switching Costs; Phone Service Quality and Phone Plan Quality; Complaint Management, Customer Service Quality, Brand Image, and Social Norms respectively. The findings suggest that there is a risk to the major carriers from well-financed foreign entrants, and that successful strategies will require strong leverage of price and quality advantages.

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