Purpose -Corporate image, perceived service quality, trust and customer switching costs are the major antecedents of customer loyalty, and loyal customers may buy more, accept higher prices and have a positive word-of-mouth effect. Also we know that the cost of selling to new customers is much higher than the cost of selling to existing customers. Although this fact is apparent to everyone, many companies are still losing customers at a formidable rate. In this context the main aim of this paper is to examine the relationships between these factors and customer loyalty, and the relationships among these factors in the Turkish GSM sector. Design/methodology/approach -Data was obtained from 1,662 mobile phone users in Turkey via questionnaire. The data was analyzed by structural equation modeling (SEM) in order to test all the relationships between variables in the model. Findings -The findings supported the proposed hypotheses, which are consistent with the theoretical framework. Analysis results showed that perceived service quality is a necessary but not sufficient condition for customer loyalty. Research limitations/implications -In order to generalize the findings from the paper, the model should be studied in different sectors. The contribution of this paper is to model all the relationships between customer loyalty and its antecedents, and to test these relationships simultaneously. Practical implications -In order to better understand customer loyalty, as well as perceived service quality, corporate image, perceived switching costs and trust should be taken into consideration. Lately, technological change has shifted competition in the GSM sector from price and core service to value-added services. Therefore, operators should differentiate their services and guarantee their services' quality because of this shift in competition. Originality/value -In this paper, the effects of all the factors on customer loyalty are analyzed simultaneously via SEM.

Purpose -In the GSM mobile telephony sector, the main condition for protecting the subscriber base is to win customer loyalty, a key necessity for the maintenance of a brand's life in the long term. To achieve this aim, customer satisfaction and trust must be measured and "switching costs" identified. The latter render subscribers' preference for rival operators more expensive. In this connection, this paper's aim is to measure the effects of customer satisfaction and trust on customer loyalty, and the direct and indirect effect of "switching cost" on customer loyalty. Design/methodology/approach -The data set covered 1,662 mobile phone users in Turkey. The data were analyzed by moderated regression analysis to test the hypotheses. Findings -The findings of this study show that the switching cost factor directly affects loyalty, and has a moderator effect on both customer satisfaction and trust. Therefore, it plays a crucial role in winning customer loyalty. In short, it is a quasi moderator. However, switching costs was measured as a unidimensional factor, but switching costs in fact contains psychological, financial and procedural sub-dimensions. Therefore, future research might measure the sub-dimensions of switching costs and examine their moderating effects. Originality/value -With respect to the findings, trust has more importance than customer satisfaction in engendering loyalty, since trust contains belief in the brand, which provides positive outcomes not only in the present but also in the future. But customer satisfaction does not contain this dimension. So, the effect of trust on loyalty becomes greater than the effect of customer satisfaction. Therefore, any GSM operator who wishes to preserve its existing subscriber base should concentrate on winning its subscribers' trust.

PurposeTo build a National Consumer Satisfaction Index for Turkey, drawing on models already in existence in Sweden, the USA, Norway and the European Union. In so doing, to remedy observed practical shortcomings of those indices.Design/methodology/approachStructural equation modelling was applied to the general model, in the specific context of the mobile telephone market in Turkey, based on data collected by questionnaire from more than 1,500 subscribers.FindingsThe purpose‐designed new customer satisfaction index exhibits good fit and strong explanatory power. It is the most comprehensive so far developed, by virtue of adding two new factors to the model.Research limitations/implicationsThe new Turkish index was tested for validity and reliability only in the context of mobile telephony; it should ideally now be further tested in different sectors, periodically, to validate comparisons with other national variants. More latent variables and economic data should be incorporated to analyse the links among the index itself, loyalty and economic consequences. It is suggested that the partial least squares method could have been more appropriate than the maximum likelihood iteration procedure actually employed.Practical implicationsApart from its obvious role in assessing customer satisfaction in a domestic market, a customer satisfaction index can be extended to the level of comparing whole economies. This is of considerable significance for Turkey's ambitions to join the European Union.Originality/valueThis article enhances and extends an established but relatively little known quantitative method for evaluating customer satisfaction, and thereby offers an important diagnostic tool to marketing planners

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a new customer have been found to be up to six times higher than the costs of retaining existing ones'.1 Moreover, it is known that as customer loyalty increases, the sensitivity of the customer to price decreases.2 In this context, the struggle to protect customer base by acquiring loyal customers through developing long-term relationships is important. Especially in telecommunications services, it is frequently noted that once customers have been acquired and connected to a particular operator's network, their long-term relationships with the focal INTRODUCTIONDue to changes in the technology and business environment, markets have now reached the maturity phase, shifting from local or domestic to international competence. Hence, in the more competitive market, firms work with products with a shorter product-life curve. In this environment, acquiring new customers has become difficult. As the cost and difficulty of acquiring new customers increase, protecting the existing customer base becomes important. Indeed, 'the costs of attracting Gö khan Ö zeris Associate Professor at the School of Business Administration, Gebze Institute of Technology, Turkey, and an advisor to the Turkish Telecommunications Board.Abstract Both academics and practitioners approve of the strategic role of customer switching cost on ensuring customer loyalty. However, there is no consensus on either conceptualisation or measuring customer switching costs. In this context, the aims of this study are (1) to develop a model by using different sub-constructs of customer switching costs to prove this model's reliability and validity (discriminant and convergence) and (2) to analyse relationships among customer loyalty, customer satisfaction, trust and switching costs' sub-constructs in the mobile phone market. To this end, the data were obtained from 1,662 'global system for mobiles' (GSM) users by using a questionnaire. The findings, reached from exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis, show that the model of customer switching costs is reliable and valid, and there are statistically significant relationships among variables as expected.