Factors Affecting Consumers' Choice of Mobile Communication Service Providers in the City Of Tshwane

The South African cellular phone market has reached saturation in terms of subscriber numbers, which currently far exceed the number of inhabitants of the country. The industry players consist of four network operators, as well as a plethora of mobile virtual network operators that have entered the market in recent times. However, the market is still dominated by the two initial network operators that pioneered the advent of mobile communications in the early nineties and new entrants struggle to attract significant market share to change this oligopoly. It is thus interesting to note that no research exists that has investigated the phenomenon of consumer choice of mobile services providers in this market. The purpose of this study was to identify the factors that affect consumer choice regarding mobile services providers in the City of Tshwane in order to understand what influences this phenomenon in the South African mobile communications market. Four factors were identified in this regard, namely, brand image, service quality, network quality and call rates. An online survey was conducted with 400 respondents to gather consumer views on the influence of these factors on their choice of mobile services provider. Excel 2010 was used to generate certain descriptive statistics from the data gathered. While the findings show that all the aforementioned factors have a profound effect on consumer choice of mobile services provider, call rate and service quality have the most influence. The implication of these findings is that having deep knowledge and understanding of the service factors that are considered important by customers will assist companies in determining branding and pricing strategies that are congruent with public affordability and the prevailing economic climate.