Analysis of the influencing factors of users' switching intention in the context of one-way mobile number portability

This paper reviews the implementation of mobile number portability (MNP) in other countries except China. The authors tested the influencing factors of users' switching intention in the context of the one-way MNP policy survey data from 400 China Mobile users in Tianjin (pilot city). The study briefly describes the implementation of one-way MNP, particularly the “lag system” MNP and its implementation effect in Korea, with which country China has an analogy under the MNP policy. The current paper seeks to provide a reasonable referential direction for the further development of government regulation under the MNP policy.Then, a research model is developed based on users' actual behavior in the pilot city. The results of this research show that customer satisfaction (including call quality, mobile device and customer complement), switching costs and attractiveness of alternatives have significant effects on users' switching intention. Among these factors, customer satisfaction and switching costs are the most important to China mobile users. In comparison, the attractiveness of alternatives (China Telecom, China Unicom) is not a considerable factor of switching intention to China mobile users, in the context of one-way MNP. We conclude with a discussion of the contributions and limitations of this study.