Abstract:
The academic research on corporate reputation is relatively quiet new as a field of study. There is little research that has been conducted to examine whether corporate reputation plays a role in customers‘ service provider selection behavior especially in the mobile telecommunications industry and to the extent that it can be used as a competitive advantage for organizations. This work argues that though there are metrics that have been used to measure the reputation of corporations but all of them are multi-stakeholder with none focusing on a single stakeholder like the customer. An empirical data was collected from 400 mobile phone users or customers of the mobile telecommunications companies in Ghana except for Expresso which did not have a representation in the survey. The results of the survey, first and foremost indicates that consumers of mobile telecommunications strongly perceive quality services from telecommunication companies but were not that satisfied with innovation for the operators. It was also discovered that corporate reputation elements such as emotional appeal and credibility of service providers strongly informed customers‘ choice. Finally, the results indicate that corporate reputation can affect the future decisions of customers‘ behavior when it comes to service provider selection. This study contributes to our understanding of the link between corporate reputation and customers‘ service provider selection as well as future selection behavior. By doing so it also contributes to the practical management of corporate reputation by confirming the importance of the affective aspect of corporate reputation and of service provider selection behavior and its creation.
