Antecedentes e consequentes da satisfação de clientes no setor serviços de telefonia móvel no Brasil: proposição e teste de um modelo

Abstract

Despite being an important sector for the economy of Brazil, mobile phone services faces several challenges, including the pursuit of customer satisfaction and retention. With increasingly diversified products and a bigger number of available mobile phones, it is really important for mobile services providers to understand what should be developed to meet the consumers’ needs and thus not let the clients dissatisfied enough to seek other brands. The mobile phone providers have high complaint rate in the country, and therefore investigate factors leading to satisfaction and intent to stay with the providers is relevant. Thus, the aim of this paper is to propose and test a model that includes antecedents and consequences of customer satisfaction of mobile phone services in Minas Gerais, Brazil. The study was descriptive and the proposed model was tested with the data collected from a survey with customers of mobile phone providers in the city of Belo Horizonte. The collected data were analyzed by structural equation modelling and thee results showed that almost all hypotheses were supported, and the quality of service strongly influences satisfaction and this impacts both brand trust as the intention to remain with the provider. Additionally, the influences of nearby people bring (1) greater trust in the recommended brands and, at the same time, (2) higher perceived quality of the provided services. Although controversial, the practice of making the onsumer exit difficult, here treated as barriers to change, really makes the customer remains with the provider.