The Newcastle Business School Masters Dissertation Proposal

Name : POON YUNG WUI Programme : International Business Management (MSc)

This form MUST be accompanied by the NBS PG Dissertation Registration Form (available from the Postgraduate Office) The number of words for each section are for GUIDANCE ONLY.

1 Researchable Topic Area: you should include background and issue(s) underlying the research (approximately 150-200 words): Customer relation strategy can be classified as positive and negative retention strategies. According to previous research studies, there are some prove show that negative retention strategy are more effectively in retaining customers than positive retention. According to Alamaro (2001), negative retention strategy work effectively to target customers company want to retain, and positive retention strategy like discount and loyalty points are much more effectively work for every customers especially the new customers. It is important to adopt both retention strategies in order to maximum the company profits. This assignment will aim to investigate the customer retention on mobile network providers in united kingdom. The study will aims to investigate the effectiveness of positive and ngative retention strategy. A case study of Three Mobile will be adopted. Because there is a widely area in customer retention strategy section, the study will again focus on effectiveness of the positive and negative retention strategies on the customers of the mobile network providers.

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2 Objectives for the Research: you should state3-4 maximum research objectives,relating to academic theories, your proposed investigation, your analysis and your conclusions (approximately 80-100 words): This proposal aims to critical evaluate the customer retention and retention strategies on the customers of the mobile network providers in the UK. There are some objectives of the research must be followed: 1. Critically evaluate the aspects of customer retention contributing to increase the company profit and continuously revenue generation. 2. To analyse the effectiveness of positive and negative retention strategies on the mobile networks providers. 3. To suggest which positive and negative retention strategies can be well adopted by the mobile providers in the united kingdom,

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3 Literature Review: you should identify and discuss the academic theories and some current research relevant to your researchable topic area You should use in text citations, APA reference style and add a full reference list in Section 8 (approximately 500700 words).

Positive retention strategy including creating customer delight, increase customer engagement with the organisation at the same time increase customer perceived value. Alamaro (2011) stated that the negative retention strategy is the development of the exit barriers and the switching cost in order to keep the customers stay with the organisations. According to Huber (2008), in order to competitive with others organisations, there is a must to adopt both positive and negative retention. But most of the organisations did not evaluate the effectiveness of the differents types of practical view involved in the strategy planning. Oxtayasi( 2011), had furthermore recommended positive retention strategies are effectively only when it is for a long term period, it is because the customers loyalty take time to build up. Recently, the market conditions change dramatically due to high competitive business environment. The effectiveness of positive retention strategy are definited as slowly diminishing (Buttle and Ang, 2006). Clayton-Smith (1996) further illustrated that many industry areas does not have a convicing negative retention strategy especially for those service-based industry. In the mobile telecommunication industry, customers has to reliable on the service of a specific company for a long term period, thus the effectiveness of positive and negative retention strategies have been emphasised. (Admad and Buttle, 2002) In other industry such as hotel and airline industry, customer do not use the service on regular basis. Thus, there is no specific negative retention strategy needed to be employed. Oztayasi and Sezgin (2011) claim that the negative retention strategy can only be adopted in the relationship based services and only in the service industry that used by the customers for a continuously and long term basis. In the mobile telecommunication industry, the mobile network providers would adopt some retention strategies such as provide discounts to customer which are in contract such as handphone promotions. The providers tries to convert the pay-as-you-go customers to contract customers for example, certain discount or gift provided. This retention strategy are used to retain the customers for long term period by providing temptating offer to customers. These benefits can be considers as similarity in the nature of loyalty program in order to reduce effectiveness. Most research conducted on the factors influencing customer retention has focused on the customers point of view. There are several researchers perceive customer retention as the propensity for customers to stay with their service providers, and is therefore viewed as a behavioural factors (Ranaweera & Prabhu, 2003).

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Sharma and Patterson (1999) created a relationship commitment model, the model consists of three factors such as communication effectiveness, technical quality and functional quality, which affected by trust in the relationship. Trust is definited by the authors as belief that the mobile networks providers can be reliable and guarantee for a long-term interest of the customers. The relationship commitment is influenced by the quality provided, the greater the quality, the stronger the commitment (Sharma & Patterson, 1999) Effectively communications enable the customers to assess financial risk and outcomes.

4 Details of your research: (a) Identify who or what you will use to obtain data or information (b) Explain how you will collect this data / information and how you will get access (c) Identify how you are going to analyse your data / information (approximately 500700 words). In the data collection for this research, primary data will be collected by customers of different mobile communication providers and analysis the result, why they choose the particular mobile providers, what the benefits the providers offer to them? And the secondary data will be mainly found in form of research articile and others jornal data related to mobile network industry. Since our case study is about three mobile company, the primary data collected will included the customer base of Three Mobile UK. After some research conducted, I found out that the best approach method would be snowball smapling approach. Snowball sampling approach is which the researcher collects data on the few members of the target population he or she can locate, then asks those individuals to provide information needed to locate other members of that population whom they know. This sampling will be effectively as the population is larger and researcher will face some limitation in term of resoruces and time. Research methodology will be conducted to understand the customer retention and its effectiviness in positive and negative retention. Both the quantitative and qualitative method will be adopting in the research field. We will look into the quantitative method (questionnaire), will explain the type of questionnaire conduct; how, when and where the questionnaire conducted.

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Data collection are normally involved two method: Secondary research and primary research. In the primary research, we collect data by using survey and questionnaires. Collect data using questionnaires can enable us to collect data and coding it in short time and the closed ended questions can provided a clear understanding and specific on the study. In the primary data, although the collection of data is depicts as the situation on the ground. It has limitation that you need to persuade people to involve in the study. In the secondary research, we obtain the data from journal or articles which was previously written by other researchers. This research method is can obtained easily from online sources.The secondary data has some limitation and consider not specific because the research study may not reflect the same subject as your topic. This may take time to study and find out the information you need. This process is time-costing and may end up nothing. To sum up, it is necessary for the researcher to collect data from both secondary and primary researches in order to obtain clear information,

Data analysis is analyse the data collected to understand the result obtained. Data analyse is important to measure the data result is comes with its original messenge, and avoid any error during the conduction. The process of data analysis included coding the responses and questions using numeric numbers. This enables the data throughout the SPSS analysis. There are several statistics tests need to be conducted to measure the data as described. After the correct data was entered, frequencies will run to generate the descriptive statistics. For each question in the survey, the overall percentages, averages, modes and ranges presented in table or chat form. When conducting open-ended questions, the response from the open-ended question was group into a category with similar response. It is then counted and categories were prioritized based upon frequency of mention. The most often mentioned responses to open-ended questions are presented in table format, similar to the closed-ended (multiple choice type questions), in the results section of this report. In general, open-ended questions elicit the strongest and most important responses of visitors. They also lead to a

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relatively wide range of detailed responses and give the respondents an opportunity to express their opinion on important issues in their own words. The method used in conducting the research intends to influence the research. In this section adopt both the quantitative and qualitative method in the research field chapter and aims to explain the reason and the advantage of adopting the quantitative and qualitative research method.

5 Research ethics: - if your study involves people, briefly describe what you will consider in order to ensure that your research follows the Universitys Ethical Policies and Procedures, for example, individual consent and / or organisational consent. If your study involves secondary data only, you should advise us of any ethical issues or the absence of any ethical issues (approximately 50100 words). There are some important research ethics consideration which show up during the research on-going and especially during the primary data collection will be any negative consequences to the voluneteers in the participation in the study. In order to avoid such ethical issues, there are some strategies we need to consider and adopt such as developing a plan and appraising all the h adopted in mobile network providers. A case study of Three Mobile will be adopted. This research will be conducted using primary data collected from the customer of the company using a questionnaires sampling approach. There research will be using deductive approach and quantitative research strategy. A survey method will be conducted in order to collect the primary data. In the end of result, we would analysis which type of retention strategies are more effective in building customer retention.

7 Timetable for your research: you should cover the whole period of time available (by month). You should indicate below when you are going to work on various parts of your dissertation, for example, your literature review, your

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collection of data / information, your analysis of the data / information, your conclusions and final revisions of your dissertation: Month March April May June July August September Dissertation Activity (parts) Refine Research Objectives Literature Review Research methodology Analysis data collection and design data collection tools Conduct Primary Research Analyse primary research; write chapter 4 Review all chapter drafts, finalise, proof read, submit

8 Reference List in APA style.

1. Kothari, R.C, (2003), Research Methodology: Methods and Techniques, Wishwa Prakasan, New Delhi. 2. Lewin, D., Williamson, B. and Cave, M., (2009) Regulating next generation fixed access to telecommunications services, info, Vol. 11 Iss: 4, pp.3 18 3. Pehrsson, A., (2009) Barriers to entry and market strategy: a literature review and a proposed model, European Business Review, Vol. 21 Iss: 1, pp.64 77 4. Saunders, M., Lewis, P., and Thornhill, A. (2007), Research Methods for Business Students, (4th edn), Harlow: Pearson Education 5. Sivapragasam, N., Aguero, A. and de Silva, H., (2011) The potential of mobile remittances for the bottom of the pyramid: findings from emerging Asia, info, Vol. 13 Iss: 3, pp.91 109 6. Srinuan, P., Annafari, M. T. and Bohlin, E., (2011) An analysis of switching behavior in the Thai cellular market, info, Vol. 13 Iss: 4, pp.61 74 7. Gould, B, (1998) The rise, fall and return or customer retention at MCI, Antidote, The, Vol. 3 Iss: 5, pp.40 40

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8. Henning-Thurau, T. and Hansen, U., (2000), Relationship marketing; gaining competitive advantage through customer satisfaction and customer retention, Springer publications Ltd. 9. Huber, M., (2008), From customer retention to a holistic stakeholder management system; leading innovation, Springer publications Ltd. 10. Oztayasi, B. and Sezgin, S., (2011), A measurement tool for customers relationship management process, Industrial management and data systems, volume and 11, issue six, pages 943 to 960.

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