Is Having an Expert “Friend” Enough? An Analysis of Consumer Switching Behavior in Mobile Telephony

Do telecommunications prices depend on consumer engagement?

“…Over the past two decades, regulators and public authorities have developed various instruments to increase price comparability of operators and their respective services, with somewhat disappointing results. The evidence is that the creation of switching websites/apps, and their extensive publicity, may not be effective at increasing switching rates, even during periods of rapidly increasing prices ( Brennan, 20 07 ;Defeuilley, 20 09 ;Giulietti et al, 2014 ;Hortaçsu et al, 2017 ;Genakos et al, 2018 ). 16 Our results provide new evidence of the relevance of consumer behavior for competition in the telecommunications market and point to the need to promote measures that can foster consumer engagement, especially dedicated to the consumer groups that are less inclined to use them.…”

“…The reluctance of consumers to seek for better deals or to switch to operators that commercialize more competitive offers reduces the benefits of retail competition and obliges regulators to develop new measures for enhancing market dynamism. Traditional strategies aimed at increasing competition, such as the regulation of number portability and the creation of price comparison applications, may have a limited impact on consumer welfare if consumers are not sufficiently engaged ( Buehler et al, 2006 ;Genakos et al, 2018 ).…”

Subsidies, Speed and Switching? Impacts of an Internet Subsidy in Colombia

“…There is a large body of work that examines residential internet adoption policies (e.g., Cardona et al, 2009;Hausman et al, 2001;Rappoport et al, 2003;Ida and Kuroda, 2006;Goolsbee, 2002;Goolsbee and Klenow, 2006;Nevo et al, 2016;Rosston et al, 2010;Dutz et al, 2009;Varian, 2002;Goldfarb and Prince, 2008;Greenstein and McDevitt, 2011;Hidalgo and Sovinsky, 2022), where our work is specifically related to the literature on consumer switching behavior (e.g., Giulietti et al, 2005;Krafft and Salies, 2008;Wilson and Price, 2010;Genakos et al, 2018). We examine this issue in the context of a developing nation, adding to the literature that includes studies of OECD countries (Belloc et al, 2012), Latin American (Jordán et al, 2013) and Caribbean countries (Galperin and Ruzzier, 2013), and…”