Consumer attitudes towards switching supplier in three deregulated markets

Amelie Gamble, E. Asgeir Juliusson and Tommy Gärling

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), 2009, vol. 38, issue 5, 814-819

Abstract: The efficiency of deregulated markets is jeopardized by consumers failing to switch supplier to the extent that would be beneficial to them. In order to disentangle the determinants of failures to switch, the present study investigates consumers' motives for negative attitudes towards switching in the deregulated Swedish markets for electricity, landline telecom, and home insurance. Based on the results of a mail survey of a random sample of 458 household consumers, reliable measures were constructed of attitude towards switching supplier, loyalty to the incumbent, information search costs to compare suppliers, and expected economic benefits from switching. A negative attitude towards switching supplier was shown to increase with loyalty, increase with information search costs and decrease with expected economic benefits. Attitude towards switching was more negative in the electricity market than in the other markets and more negative in the landline telecom market than in the home insurance market. The differences between markets were accounted for by differences in loyalty, information search costs, and expected economic benefits.

Keywords: Deregulated; markets; Switching; supplier; Consumer; attitudes (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (34)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6W5H ... 1554fa3caff47a40d8db
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:soceco:v:38:y:2009:i:5:p:814-819

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) is currently edited by Pablo Brañas Garza

More articles in Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics) from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().