The Effect of Trust, Commitment, and Conflict Handling on Customer Retention: The Mediating Role of Customer Satisfaction

ABSTRACT Previous studies have investigated drivers of customer retention in the mobile telecommunications industry worldwide. These studies call on scholars pay to attention to these factors in the scholarly marketing literature, since customer retention is the basic tenet of relationship marketing. Drawing on relationship marketing theory, this study analyzes the direct and indirect relationships amongst trust, commitment, and conflict handling on customer retention. A cross-sectional survey using a structured questionnaire was employed to gather data from customers of mobile telecommunication operators. The findings revealed that only conflict handling had a direct significant effect on customer retention. Also, trust and conflict handling had a direct and significant effect on customer satisfaction. However, trust and conflict handling were seen to have an indirect significant effect on customer retention via customer satisfaction. The study recommends that managers should effectively resolve customer complaints as well as build their trustworthiness in order to satisfy and retain their customers.