African Journal of Business Management Vol.4 (13), pp. 2885-2898, 4 October, 2010 Available online at http://www.academicjournals.org/AJBM ISSN 1993-8233 ©2010 Academic Journals

Full Length Research Paper

Exploring influencing factors for the selection of mobile phone service providers: A structural equational modeling (SEM) approach on Malaysian consumers
Sabbir Rahman1, Ahasanul Haque1* and Mohd Ismail Sayyed Ahmad2
1

Faculty of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University, Malaysia, Box No. 10, 50728 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 2 Graduate School of Management, International Islamic University, Malaysia, Box No. 10, 50728 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Accepted 26 August, 2010

The aim of this paper is to assess
The first step involved the incorporation of TM in 1987 as a government-owned company. Later, new companies were licensed to provide certain services such as mobile cellular telephones, pagers, trunked radio, two-way radio system and other value-added services (Government Report, 1995). This research focuses particularly on consumer in the cell phone industry in Malaysia. Moreover the proposed research also builds on existing consumer behavior literature by exploring the role of perception that ultimately influence for the selection of an operator’s services. The overall objective in this research is to understand the influencing factors for the selection of mobile phone service providers in Malaysian mobile telecom market by the customers. Meanwhile Deutsch (1953) states this trend as “a web of nations”. Today’s development of communication technology ignores the global border and makes the world as “global village” (McLuhan, 1964). This reform of

the communication technology since been expanded to include the transformation of the traditional voice telecom network into an expanded and enhanced information infrastructure, which is capable of communicating all forms of information content (Melody, 2003). The growth rate in the use of telecommunication facilities has increased dramatically, especially in the rank of increasing number of telephone subscribers. The number of telephones for