Identifying the Dimensions of Switching Barrier experienced in Telecommunication Services

The competitive telecommunication market environment gives royal preferences to their customers. Subscribers of telecom services are enjoying the liberty to move around and subscribe to any service providers offered in the market. In the meantime, telecom service providers are aware of the importance of retaining a customer. The retention strategy of service providers have sharpened by the introduction of switching barriers. This switching barriers act as an intangible hurdle before customers who wish to change the telecom service provider. The barrier begins with the subscriber‟s initial intention to switch and continues till it completes the switching process to another service provider. During this journey, the various factors of barrier helps the service provider to pull back the subscriber from switching intention. Thus switching barrier felicitates the service providers to retain subscriber and enjoy the monopolistic advantages in a perfect competitive market environment. This study reviews and identifies the essential factors in creating a switching barrier for telecom service providers to retain customers.