Document 5 and Gaps from Previous Documents

The outcome of Document 3 helped in the development of a questionnaire based on customer experiences of STC. The questionnaire developed following this interviews captured essential aspects of customer satisfaction from a qualitative approach. However, it was not possible to draw relationships between the different factors and explain their significance level. The purpose of document 3 was primarily to help in the development of a questionnaire based on qualitative findings, which sufficed as secondary to the findings realised following the administration of the questionnaire.

Document 4 used outputs from Document 3 to develop a provisional understanding of the relative performances of STC and its major competitor. However, the results discussed in Document 4 only provided descriptive findings about select demographic factors and the key performance indices. The scope of the data discussed in Document 4 was extended to incorporate competitor’s customers and their perspectives on the two service providers. However, the descriptive nature of the findings could not be used to make substantive inferences. For example, the researcher could not use the findings of Document 4 to state with finality the differences in performance between STC and its major competitor, nor the relative impact of the various Image, Service and Price factors on commitment (and, indirectly, on churn). In other words, it was difficult to situate the role of the factors related to customer satisfaction and commitment, for example, in determining STC churn rate and/or reducing it.

To remedy the limitations outlined in Documents 4, the current Document (Document 5) builds upon the results of the descriptive research in the previous documents to introduce an advanced approach to testing the relationship between commitment, its Service, Image, and Price antecedents. Advanced statistical operations using SPSS are also conducted to ascertain the levels of customer commitment for both STC and its competitor in relation to

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mobile service provision. However, the ‘Commitment’ variable was not evaluated in Document 4. Further, AMOS software was used to help refine the questionnaire and make it as parsimonious as practicable, for ready and regular application as a top-level diagnostic tool. At the Document 4 stage of this project, it had already been determined that the detailed questions for sections D to J contained too much information for general company reporting and, as a consequence, analysis of responses for ‘Price’ and for ‘Service’ was limited to top- level/headline questions only (see items in sections D to J highlighted yellow). This same pattern was retained for Document 5, but the researcher found it necessary to see if he could evaluate the factor structure of Image and commitment and reduce the number of questions related to both, too. The current document also provides more sophisticated analyses than those incorporated into Document 4, for comparing performance between Al Jawal and its major competitor in terms of commitment antecedents i.e. Service, Image and Price.

Consequently, the research objectives addressed in the current document (Document 5) are as follows:

1. To ascertain the level of customer commitment currently being experienced by STC in respect of its mobile service provision

2. To ascertain the level of customer commitment currently being experienced by STC’s major competitor in respect of its mobile service provision

3. To ascertain whether levels of commitment vary on a region-by-region basis 4. To refine the questionnaire used in Document 4 so it is suitable for gathering

relevant customer intelligence quickly and efficiently on an ongoing basis. 5. To determine the relative contribution of pre-determined antecedents (Image,

Price, and Service) to overall expressions of customer commitment

6. To compare the performance of both STC and its major competitor in respect of commitment and its antecedents, Image, Price, and Service.

7. To make recommendations to STC as to how it might improve both its absolute and competitive position in respect of customer commitment and, thus, reduce churn.

4.3.1 Data processing and analysis

This section addresses the analyses undertaken in order to address the objectives for Document 5 as listed above. Ultimately, Document 5 analysis focused on 14 questions that were considered reflective of Image, one top-level Price question, six further top-level

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questions all considered to comprise an index formative of Service (cf. Diamantopoulos and Winklhofer, 2001 on construction of indexes with formative indicators) and four questions concerning Commitment (at this stage considered formative, but tested later). All Price and Service questions were measured on a 5-point Likert scale, and all Commitment questions were measured on a 10-point Likert scale. Note, that a fifth Commitment question was omitted from the analysis, as this was multiple choice rather than scaled. The relevant questions are highlighted in yellow in Appendix C. Data obtained from the questionnaires were entered into Microsoft Excel 2013 where error-checking and conversion of data into numerical format were undertaken. For example, all Al Jawal customers were coded as 1 whereas competitor customers were coded as 2. The researcher also used Microsoft Excel to create charts based on the data because Excel was deemed superior to SPSS when it comes to developing interactive chart features. Data were arranged into columns for each variables. SPSS version 21 was then used to code variables and set their attributes such as labels, missing values, values, decimals, widths, and types. The data in Microsoft Excel were then duplicated to SPSS for further analyses.

For objective one, which entailed ascertaining the level of customer commitment currently being experienced by STC in respect of its mobile service provision, descriptive statistics were generated using SPSS for the commitment construct. An independent sample t- test was performed to determine whether there was a statistically significant difference in the means of the commitment construct between STC and its competitor. An independent sample t-test is useful when comparison of the scores of two different sample groups is necessary (Pallant, 2013).

The second objective was about ascertaining the level of customer commitment currently being experienced by STC’s major competitor in respect of its mobile service provision. To address this objective, descriptive statistics were generated to determine the frequency of responses and the mean for the various indicators of commitment. The select cases procedure in SPSS was used to exclude STC respondents for the purposes of this data analysis procedure. The rationale for the select cases was to ensure that the results generated only related to STC’s competitors thereby enhancing accuracy of findings in this respect.

The third objective was about ascertaining whether there were region-based variations in commitment levels. Since there were four regions, an ANOVA test was deemed most appropriate for determining whether respondents scored the commitment reflective indicators differently based on the region they came from. This is because ANOVA test is similar to t-

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tests only that it is run when there are at least two (and particularly more than two) groups with the intention to compare mean scores on continuous variables (Pallant, 2013). However, post-hoc analysis was performed to determine the regions that scored commitment differently (Pallant, 2013). Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference (HSD) was used as the follow-up test of the ANOVA to establish region-by-region variation of means in commitment (Lane, 2010). To ensure precision in findings, data for STC was analysed independently from that of STC’s major competitor.

Objective 4 was entailed refining of the questionnaire used in Document 4 so it is suitable for gathering relevant customer intelligence quickly and efficiently on an ongoing basis. For this objective, the researcher used Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) to develop a simplified model for this objective effectively. Griffith (2010) described AMOS as “an interactive interface) that is useful in building Structural Equation Models (SEMs) and uncovering otherwise concealed relationships while observing graphically how variations in some values influence other values (p.314).

Objective 5 was about determining the relative contribution of pre-determined antecedents to overall expressions of customer commitment. Since Price, Image, and service have been projected in literature as the antecedents of commitment, AMOS was used to establish the predictor power of each of the constructs (antecedents) with respect to commitment. Although this might have been possibly performed using multiple regression in SPSS, AMOS was more appropriate because its intuitive interface allows for the creation of models that closely relate to the real world than SPSS’ multivariate analytical methods can (Griffith, 2010).

Through objective 6, the researcher sought to compare the performance of both STC and its major competitor in respect of commitment and its antecedents, Price, service and Image. The results for the Image, service, Price, and commitment for both STC and its major competitor were compared using and independent samples tests in SPSS. The essence was to draw out any statistically significant mean differences (p< .05) for each of the scales. Finally, objective 7 was achieved through interpretive analysis of the quantitative findings discussed in the six objectives preceding it.

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