Investigating the Facebook Applications and Their Impact on Customer Loyalty in the Turkish Mobile Telecommunication Industry

Abstract

The competition in the mobile telecommunication industry has intensified with the removal of obstacles tonumber portability among mobile service providers (GSM operators). Thus, the operators in the industry furtherincrease their investments in loyalty programs and seek to effectively reach both current and potential customersby participating in social media tools which are intensely used by those customers. One of the social media toolsmostly used by today's customers is Facebook. Firms can create contents that contain various messages anddevelop various applications (apps) via Facebook. The aim of this study is to investigate the applicationsdeveloped by the firms of the mobile telecommunication industry via their Facebook pages and to test the effectof these applications on customer loyalty. In this regard, a survey based empirical research was conducted on thesubscribers of GSM operators in Turkey who followed the official Facebook pages of these operators. Thefindings indicated that Facebook applications of mobile service providers had a significant influence oncustomer loyalty. The study also revealed that the most exploratory dimensions of Facebook applications werecustomer relations applications and informative applications.