CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND BRAND CREDIBILITY AS PREDICTORS OF BRAND LOYALTY AMONG GLOBACOM (GLO) SUBSCRIBERS: A STUDY OF THE STUDENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LAGOS

BACKGROUND TO THE STUDY: Customer happiness and brand credibility have both recently been acknowledged as crucial elements in any company's growth. Customer satisfaction, which has to do with meeting, exceeding, and ultimately fulfilling consumers' expectations, is the sentiment of contentment with the services or products offered by a firm. On the other side, brand credibility is the perception of confidence in a company; keeping a brand promise is crucial because it affects consumer behavior, which in turn has an impact on how well an organization does overall.

Customers are an organization's most precious asset, according to Niazi, Tehmina, and Basit (2019). The rapid growth of the service sector has led to businesses adopting a fundamental shift toward a service-based model of exchange in which consumers play a significant role. Customer pleasure is the precursor to trust, according to Leninkumar's (2017) study, which demonstrated the strong link between brand credibility and consumer satisfaction. Human nature frequently drives us to build trust in situations where we are gratified. Customers are more likely to trust a brand they are more satisfied with than one that they are not.

According to American marketing author Kotler, a person's feelings of satisfaction or dissatisfaction stem from comparing a product's perceived performance or outcome to his or her expectations. According to Razak & Mohd's research from 2019, customer happiness reflects how well the product use experience stacks up to the buyer's value expectations. In order for a consumer to be considered happy, the service provided must have surpassed their prior expectations, which is important for fostering brand loyalty. Due to the indestructible nature of services, which is a belief in the product knowledge held in a brand, brand credibility is crucial in the service sector. It is dependent on customers’ perception of whether the brand has the ability to be accepted in the consumers’ minds (Jeng, 2016). Brand credibility develops with the brand experience when consumers utilize the product. It refers to the product positioning in the minds of the consumers to build customers' choices (Bougoure and Bennett, 2016).

A credible brand indicates that marketing activities will be more cost-effective because of the higher likelihood of message adoption, which will bring businesses increased revenue through repeat business and referrals. A credible brand guarantees consumers of a quality they can depend on. When customer loyalty is threatened by competing offerings, as it is in the Nigerian telecommunications sector, skillfully implemented customer retention strategies can be a source of competitive advantage for an organization, according to Izogo (2015) in his study on the country's telecommunications market. In order to remain in a cutthroat industry, telecommunication service providers have learned how crucial it is to evaluate the goods and services they supply. According to the National Communication Commission (2015), the telecom industry is probably Nigeria’s most vibrant and competitive industry after the petroleum sector.

According to Adekiya (2016), the most renowned of these brands are the Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM) companies: MTN, Globacom, Airtel, and 9Mobile, as cited in the (NCC 2015) study on the Nigerian telecom market. Among these corporate brands are 95 percent of Nigeria's telecoms business, worth at over 2 trillion naira, and an enviable subscriber base of 140,822,483 people (National Communication Commission, 2015). While other studies have discussed the importance of customer satisfaction, brand credibility, corporate image, and service quality in promoting brand loyalty, the extent to which these factors promote brand loyalty has yet to be thoroughly investigated, as most market research on measuring brand loyalty has focused on the frequency of repeated purchase or patronage.

Specifically, behavioral loyalty There are two major dimensions of loyalty: behavioral and attitudinal loyalty.

Customers were divided into two groups in the Colombo and Morrison approach: hard-core loyalists and potential switchers. As a result, after any particular purchase, a customer will either be sufficiently satisfied to ignore other brands and repurchase the previous brand purchased, or he will analyze alternatives and have a probability of purchasing each. This study intends to investigate customer satisfaction and brand credibility as factors that lead to brand loyalty while taking into account the two most important elements of brand loyalty.

1.2 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

Numerous Nigerian service providers obtained integrated control licenses after the Nigerian telecommunication industry was deregulated in 1996 in order to achieve freedom and efficiency, leading to a significant increase in the telecommunication sector's activity over the past 15 years (Adekiya, 2016). As a result, the Nigerian telecom industry is now likely Nigeria's second-most vibrant and competitive industry after the petroleum industry. In what is seen as a fierce battle to increase the number of subscribers on their networks, each of the well-known companies (MTN, GLO, AIRTEL, and 9MOBILE) is continuously on the lookout for ways to innovate by releasing new offers to the market. . Results from the research conducted by the Nigerian National Telecommunication Commission in 2014, stated that subscribers in the mobile telecom market possess more than one line, the implication of this is that offering high service quality to ensure customer satisfaction and brand credibility is solely not sufficient to ensure brand loyalty in the telecom market, for example, Price may dictate that brand-loyal behavior be manifested toward another brand rather than the most preferred brand.

According to Al-Msallam (2015), who was citing Reichelds' study, consumers who are satisfied or highly satisfied tend to demonstrate between 60 and 80 percent defect in most businesses. This suggests that satisfied customers are not necessarily loyal. Brand loyalty has been defined exclusively from a behavioral perspective in studies by venerable academics like (Ehrenberg, Goodhart, and Barwise; Blattberg and Sen; Khan, Kalwani, and Morrison), which has prevented the research paradigm on brand loyalty from yielding results that can be generalized. In their investigations, other researchers (Day, Dick and Basu, Baldinger and Rubinson) stressed the need of taking human attitude into account when defining brand loyalty.

This study will use behavioral and attitudinal loyalty to close the measurement gap in brand loyalty by examining the effects of telecom subscribers' happiness and credibility on brand loyalty. Customer loyalty may be the most reliable predictor of purchasing behavior (Tellis, 1988), but this does not imply that devoted customers will never shop elsewhere. For instance, improved rates and service performance from rivals may decrease loyalty, according to Keavency (1995). Interpersonal communications and vendor-client connections have a significant impact on switching and loyalty when it comes to brand loyalty.

This study aims to measure the level of influence customer satisfaction and brand credibility have in ensuring brand loyalty in this competitive industry and further assess the level of credibility that customers' have towards the telecommunication brand Globacom in Nigeria as a follow-up analysis into the question of customer satisfaction and brand credibility as predictors of brand loyalty in the Nigerian telecommunication industry.