Summary of Document 4

The questionnaire comprising numerous items as developed in Document 3 was used in Document 4 as the data collection tool (see section 4.2.1 below for further detail). This progressed the use of sequential mixed methods’ research whereby the findings of the focus group interviews led to the refinement of a questionnaire for use in Document 4, as the next research phase. Subsequently, Document 4 was a quantitative research report that attempted to measure commitment as a potential predictor of customer churn and the attributes associated with the reasons of customer defection based on a larger sample (N= 1660). This sample comprised of consumers subscribed to STC (n= 827) and other drawn from the competitor service provider (n= 833) selected based on a stratified area probability sampling procedure (see ‘Sampling’ at 4.2.1.1 below). This was because mobile customers for both STC and its competitor are scattered in the urban and rural areas consisting of the Central, Western, Southern, and Eastern regions. The rationale behind comparing the performance of STC with the performance of its biggest competitor was to investigate the performance areas that appeal to STC customers to the extent that they completely of partially abandon STC’s services for those of the competitor.

In the end, the output from Document 4 was a descriptive report of questionnaire items developed in Document 3, but the report focused on 14 Image items and just top-level questions related to six Service attributes and the top-level question relating to Price/tariff plan. Neither the responses to detailed questions in sections D to J, nor the responses to the Commitment questions in section C were analysed, as the main purpose of Document 4 was just to develop a provisional understanding of the relative performances of STC and its major competitor. A simplified data reduction process using a combination of top- and bottom- ranking values was employed to report on key performance indicators that could be used to compare STC and its major competitor visually. The results of the questionnaire were

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presented in the form of frequencies and percentages. The results appeared to show that STC performed better than its competitor in respect of service quality and commitment, but relatively the same in respect of commitment. The main outcomes derived from Document 4 were frequency distribution (in percentage) of individual lower level attributes, a comprehensive set of attribute association models, and a number of key performance metrics for both STC and its competitor. The key performance indicators for all regions across all four regions included service quality, Price and Image. In short, Document 4 built upon the qualitative findings of Document 3 using the questionnaire developed in the latter document to offer descriptive information about the survey respondents drawn from STC and its competitor.

4.2.1 Data collection details

The questionnaire (see Appendix ‘C’) was used to collect primary, quantitative data for this piece of research. Questionnaires contain structured prompts or statements that may either be open-ended or close-ended or both (Bryman 2012). According to Robson (2011), questionnaires tend to be most productive when all respondents can interpret the questionnaire items in the same way within the whole sample. The approach was to meet the subscribers individually with a set of questionnaire, as in Appendix C, for their response. The same questionnaire was used by replacing ‘Al Jawal’ with the competitor’s name to administer the survey with competitor customers. In real life, the subscribers’ decisions are independent of each other, so the researcher considers it right to conduct individual interview with the subscribers. Ten (10) interviewers were trained to conduct survey interview around the kingdom. The interviewers posed questions to the respondents and recorded their responses to ensure accuracy of responses and provide room for explaining prompts that respondents could not understand on their own.

The rationale behind administering the questionnaires face-to-face was based on two major reasons. First, the questionnaire was highly structured in the sense that affirmative or contrary responses to some prompts required respondents to skip some questions and proceed to others. Thus, it was important that trained interviewers administered the questionnaires to avoid erroneous questionnaire completion or incompletion. Indeed, Babbie (2014) noted that one of the most significant advantages of face-to-face interviewer-administered questionnaires is that “they generally produce fewer incomplete questionnaires” (p. 293). Secondly, the use of interviewer-administered face-to-face questionnaires was useful in ensuring that respondents could participate regardless of their literacy levels, as would be

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required for self-administered questionnaires, for example (Babbie, 2014). The researcher acted as the coordinator during the survey and supervised the survey activities from Riyadh. 4.2.1.1 Sampling

Quantifying the attributes and the associated reasons for loyalty or defection required identification of large samples of STC and its major competitors’ mobile subscribers. According to The World Factbook (2014) the Saudi urban population was estimated at 82.3 percent in 2011. This leaves approximately 17.7 percent residing in rural areas. In the case of both Al Jawal (brand name of STC Mobile) and its major competitor, urban and rural customer population varies considerably. The considerable variance in sub-populations implicated the need to employ stratified probability sampling.

According to Pride and Ferrell (2014), stratified sampling involves division of the target population into categories based on at least one common attribute followed by the selection of a random sample in every group. This renders stratified random sampling more representative of the population considering that all sample elements in probability sampling have equal and known chances of being chosen into the study sample (Pride and Ferrell, 2014). For the current piece of research, the stratified sample was based on the customer’s residential area.

The total sample size of Saudi Arabia was subdivided into four regions based on respective population size. The four regions included the Central, Western, Eastern and Southern regions of KSA. Subsequently, the population was grouped into relatively identical subgroups prior to commencing the stratification process. In total, there were 501 participants from the Central region (248 subscribed to Al Jawal and 253 to the competitor), 594 from the Western region (297 subscribed to Al Jawal and 297 to the competitor), 281 from the Southern region (140 subscribed to Al Jawal and 141 to the competitor), and 284 from the Eastern region (142 subscribed to Al Jawal and 142 to the competitor). The main disadvantage of using the stratified sampling technique is the need for more administrative efforts, which translates to more human resources than in when using simple random sampling techniques or even nonprobability techniques. However, the researcher used STC human resource to overcome this obstacle.

In total, 1660 randomly selected subscribers divided relatively equally between STC and its major competitor were interviewed, as demonstrated above. Each interview lasted between 60 and 90 minutes. Prior to each interview, the interviewers briefed each participant about the purpose of the survey, rights to participate voluntarily or withdraw from the study

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without penalty, privacy and ethical issues implicated. This involved individually meeting each participant at least once during the period of June to October 2008. On average, each interviewer had to conduct two or three interviews per working day. Interviewers worked 8 hours a day, 5 days a week from Saturday to Wednesday while Thursdays and Fridays were weekends. Any issue raised by members during the interview were noted by the interviewers and immediately passed on to the researcher (coordinator) for quick clarification and/or rectification.