Customer churn analysis: Churn determinants and mediation effects of partial defection in the Korean mobile telecommunications service industry

Jae-Hyeon Ahn, Sang-Pil Han and Yung-Seop Lee

Telecommunications Policy, vol. 30, issue 10-11, 552-568

Abstract: Retaining customers is one of the most critical challenges in the maturing mobile telecommunications service industry. Using customer transaction and billing data, this study investigates determinants of customer churn in the Korean mobile telecommunications service market. Results indicate that call quality-related factors influence customer churn; however, customers participating in membership card programs are also more likely to churn, which raises questions about program effectiveness. Furthermore, heavy users also tend to churn. In order to analyze partial and total defection, this study defines changes in a customer's status from active use (using the service on a regular basis) to non-use (deciding not to use it temporarily without having churned yet) or suspended (being suspended by the service provider) as partial defection and from active use to churn as total defection. Thus, mediating effects of a customer's partial defection on the relationship between the churn determinants and total defection are analyzed and their implications are discussed. Results indicate that some churn determinants influence customer churn, either directly or indirectly through a customer's status change, or both; therefore, a customer's status change explains the relationship between churn determinants and the probability of churn.

Keywords: Customer; churn; Customer; retention; Mediation; effect; Mobile; telephone; service; Business; strategy; Partial; defection (search for similar items in EconPapers)
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (23)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0308596106000760
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:telpol:v:30:y::i:10-11:p:552-568

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/30471/bibliographic
http://www.elsevier. ... /30471/bibliographic

Access Statistics for this article

Telecommunications Policy is currently edited by Erik Bohlin

More articles in Telecommunications Policy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().