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Investigation of customer Customer

satisfaction
churn insights and intelligence and churn
behavior
from social media:
a netnographic research
Jishnu Bhattacharyya Received 8 February 2020
Revised 11 July 2020
Marketing, Indian Institute of Management Kozhikode, Kozhikode, India and 21 September 2020
Management, Atal Bihari Vajpayee Indian Institute of Information Accepted 3 October 2020
Technology and Management, Gwalior, India, and
Manoj Kumar Dash
Management, Khallikote University, Berhampur, India and
Management, Atal Bihari Vajpayee Indian Institute of Information
Technology and Management, Gwalior, India
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the distinct reasons and more common reasons that reduce
customer satisfaction and are antecedents to customer churn behavior in the telecommunication industry.
Design/methodology/approach – The study adopted the netnography approach to investigate churn
behavior by utilizing online user-generated content in qualified social media communities.
Findings – The investigation revealed that “data speed issue”, “ineffective relationship building”, “service area
coverage issues” and “billing issues” are some of the most important attributes that influence a consumers’ decision
to churn. Further, the churn consequence influencers model summarizes the attributes that contribute to overall
dissatisfaction and finally results in churn behavior. The study found out the application of the netnography
approach in a quantitatively dominant research area and stands out with its insights from a rich qualitative data.
Practical implications – Proper clarification of customer expectations and pain points can help reduce
customer churn. The study will serve as the basis for developing future churn prediction models that will
contribute to the informed decision-making process.
Originality/value – Contributing to research on customer churn behavior, the study offers a novel attempt to
study customer satisfaction and customer churn behavior jointly. The paper is the first attempt that
contributes to the extant literature by adopting the unique qualitative approach to understand the reasons for
telecommunication churn behavior in the emerging Indian market. Another contribution of this research is that
the paper shifts the focus of the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) literature to the telecommunications
industry, thus adding another block to ongoing research in eWOM communication.
Peer review – The peer review history for this article is available at: https://publons.com/publon/10.1108/
OIR-02-2020-0048
Keywords Netnography, Switching behavior, Customer churn, Word-of-mouth, Social media,
Telecommunication, Customer satisfaction, India
Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction
Social media has seen phenomenal success, and today, a significantly large population is
engaged in various social platforms. According to research, people spend 1/7 of their waking
time on various social media platforms (Kemp, 2019). These have caused a paradigm shift in
the ways people make a decision, express and share ideas and engage with products, services,

The authors would like to acknowledge that this paper in its initial stage was presented in the 18th
Consortium Of Students in Management Research at Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore under
the title “An investigation of customer Insights and intelligence from social media: A Telecom Churn Online Information Review
Analysis based on Netnographic technique” and would appreciate the valuable feedback from the © Emerald Publishing Limited
1468-4527
conference chair and panel members that was very helpful for this study. DOI 10.1108/OIR-02-2020-0048