THE INFLUENCE OF SERVICE QUALITY ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND CUSTOMER BEHAVIORAL INTENTIONS BY MODERATING ROLE OF SWITCHING BARRIERS IN SATELLITE PAY TV MARKET

This study empirically tested the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in (pay television TV) industry and examined the moderating role of switching barriers in predicting customer behavior. This research incorporates a new component of switching barrier which is social ties to understand customers' behavioral intentions. Data were gathered from 245 pay TV customers via the application of a survey. The data were analyzed using structural equation modeling. The results show that there are positive relationships between service quality, customer satisfaction, and behavioral intentions. Furthermore, social ties moderate the relationships between customer satisfaction and behavioral intentions. The study has limited generalizability as it used a single satellite pay TV provider's customers as samples. Conducting comparative research in other contexts such as IPTV or cable TV would be useful to understand the whole population. Pay TV service provider should not only concentrate on customer satisfaction to gain customers' positive behavioral intentions, but also to consider switching barriers as a tool for competitiveness. Particularly, this study suggests service provider to raise social ties as a way to prevent customer to switch to another service provider. This study extends previous research on customer behavioral intentions in the context of pay TV and incorporating social ties as a new switching barriers' component.