Switchers And Stayers: An Empirical Examination Of Customer Base Of An Automobile Wheel Care Centre | Smriti Sood & Praveen Kathuria

The present research attempts to find out the reasons responsible for retention and loss of customers. While it is well accepted that customer retention costs are lower than customer acquisition costs, yet the, determinants of consumer behaviour in switching service providers are not well understood. Based on factor and discriminant analysis the study revealed that four factors, namely, (i) temporal convenience, (ii) purchase involvement, (iii) ego involvement, and (iv) active loyalty, play a significant role in influencing the consumer behaviour towards switching. Contrary to popular notion, the ?people factor? was not found to be important. Implications of the findings are discussed in the present study.