FACTORS INFLUENCING RURAL CONSUMERS TO SWITCH: A STUDY CONDUCTED TOWARDS VARIOUS MOBILE

There is a huge upsurge in the current telecommunication market in India due to
several reasons. Urban market is almost penetrated by all the national &
international players but still the rural market is not yet pierced as compare to
urban market. The 70% of population in India are staying in rural India only. So,
naturally all the marketers will try to enter the market & want to grasp it as soon as
possible. This study has been made to see that why the rural consumers are
switching from one brand to another brand & which are the factors mainly
influencing to do so. The area chosen for the study is West Bengal, which is having
several prominent rural areas of India, which comprises five divisions & from those
five subdivisions has been selected due to the rural prominence namely Rampurhat,
Islampur, Mekhligunj, Tehatta and Egra. 400 respondents have been selected on this
purpose & their opinion has been recorded with the help of a close ended
questionnaire. The researcher has also used 5 point likert scale which is ranging
from strongly agree to strongly disagree to collect the responses from the various
respondents. Factor analysis & Multiple Regression analysis have been used as
statistical tools to find out the most important factors. Findings of the study iterate
that most of the customers are influenced by network related factors at the time of
purchasing SIM cards.