Exploring service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty in Vietnam?s telecommunications industry

This study aims to examine the service quality of telecommunications and to investigate how service quality and customer satisfaction affect customer loyalty in Vietnam. The research offers theoretical contributions and extends understanding of service quality, customer satisfaction, and consumer loyalty in Vietnam's telecommunications industry. We employed two methods of data collection, including direct and online surveys. For direct surveys, we sent questionnaires directly to customers at the two biggest shopping centers in Hanoi, Vietnam. Online surveys were provided to customers who have used telecommunication services. We received 300 survey responses in that 100 direct respondents and 200 online respondents. The data were analyzed by using descriptive statistics, factor analysis, and regression to consider the relationship between service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. The results showed both service quality and customer satisfaction have a positive relationship with customer loyalty. The study also indicated service quality plays a more important role compared to customer satisfaction in its impact on customer loyalty. The findings of this study suggest that in order to improve customer loyalty, the telecommunication providers should focus on dimension "customer services and pricing structure" of service quality because it has the strongest positive impact on customers' satisfaction and then customer loyalty. Other studies have not put pricing structure as the main point in which they emphasize in customer services. The findings of this study cannot be generalized to other categories of services due to the difference in the nature of each industry. (C) 2020 The Authors. Published by IASE.