Influence of demographic variables on complaining and non-complaining motives and responses in Ghana’s mobile telephony industry

Abstract

The paper explores the influence of customer demographic variables on complaining and non-complaining motives and responses in mobile telecommunication industry in Ghana. The study was a cross-sectional survey involving customers from four mobile telephony operators. A self-administered structured questionnaire was used to collect primary data that were analysed using SPSS (version 16.0). The study found that complaining motives were significantly influenced by only marital status. It also found that non-complaining motives were influenced by marital status and age. Moreover, complaining responses were found to be significantly influenced by gender, marital status and education of consumers. The paper suggests to management and marketing practitioners to consistently collect and examine vital demographic information about their customers in order to understand customers better for effective complaint management and customer loyalty. Implications of the study to marketing theory and practice are discussed, and limitations and directions for future research have been suggested. This paper extends our knowledge of how complaining response and complaining and non-complaining motives could be influenced by some demographic variables, and contributes to the body of knowledge in the area of consumer complaining behaviour in mobile telephony industry in developing country context. Keywords: Complaining motives, Complaining responses, Demographic variables, Ghana, Mobile telephony services, Non-complaining motives