Antecedents of attitudinal loyalty in a telecom service sector: the Nigerian case

Purpose – Although the benefits of customer loyalty are well researched and understood, a clear explication of how customer attitudinal loyalty evolves is lacking. Cultural discrepancies across contexts are also argued as restraining the search for universal and dominant antecedents of loyalty. As a result of the high collectivistic ranking of the Nigerian culture, the purpose of this paper is to explore the antecedents of attitudinal loyalty within the Nigerian telecom market. Design/methodology/approach – This study is based on survey data obtained from 138 informants who are experienced users of telecommunication services in Nigeria. The cross-sectional data were examined for internal consistency using Cronbach α internal consistency measure whereas the proposed hypotheses were tested using a multiple regression technique after conducting series of validation tests to ensure that none of the assumptions of regression was violated. Findings – The results indicate that service reliability and customer commitment explains 65 per cent of the total variance in attitudinal loyalty. Additionally, customer commitment was established as a stronger predictor of attitudinal loyalty than service reliability. Research limitations/implications – This study is limited to the extent that it used a convenience sampling approach which may not have allowed for a fully matched profile of the respondents. But the satisfactory fit of the regression model allows for the research to be a basis of a reliable comparison for future studies. Additionally, due to the limited evidence on how attitudinal loyalty evolves in the telecommunication sector, the results that emerged from this research should only be compared cautiously to the findings of previous studies. Practical implications – For users of telecommunication services to become attitudinally loyal, telecom firms must get customers to become committed to their brands and also deliver reliable services. Consequently, capacity building investments that enable reliable services to be delivered and creative pricing structure and information sharing as well as promise fulfilment which attract customers’ commitment are therefore at the core of developing attitudinally loyal customers’ pool. Originality/value – Although studies on customer loyalty are not new, the fact that this paper examined how attitudinal loyalty evolves in a saturated telecommunication context with a high collectivistic cultural ranking makes it a significant contribution to customer loyalty research because of the concentration of most studies in the western markets, the likelihood of disparities across markets influencing the antecedents of the construct and the absence of such research in the Nigerian telecom setting.