Consumer satisfaction is a growing concern among businesses throughout the world. Today, manufacturing and service companies, large and small, use `satisfaction research' to determine the critical product and service attributes that provide customer satisfaction. This article examines the customer satisfaction of mobile handset end users in India. It is important that technological models of the supply side need to be supplemented with the views and impact of perceptions from the demand side of the mobile end users. This article focuses on the understanding of customer satisfaction on the demand side within the Indian market. Customer satisfaction is discussed in the context of perceived values of the mobile commerce service attributes. The authors identify product quality, service support, product distribution, service personnel, information services and corporate brand equity as the underlying factors of customer satisfaction. It ranks the mobile handset brands on the basis of these factors and identifies homogeneous subgroups among the end users.

Recent analytical report suggests that the Indian mobile phone market is set to surge ahead since urban India has a teledensity of 30, whereas rural India has a teledensity of 1.74 (Economic Times, August 29, 2005). It indiactes that the market is on an ascent, with more than 85,000 villages yet to come under the tele-connectivity. Any study on the mobile commerce is not complete, if the impact of emotional aspects on the service is not understood (WWRF, 2000, p. 9). It is in this context, that the understanding of customer satisfaction of the mobile commerce becomes much more valid.

At the outset, the success of the mobile commerce can be attributed to the personal nature of wireless devices. Adding to this, are its unique features of voice and data transmission, and distinct features like localization, reachability and convenience. (F Muller, 1990). The sustained growth of the mobile commerce around the world has been more because of the transfer of technology according to the needs of local geography. However, a comparison of the slow adoption of WAP services in Europe with the successful adoption of comparable I-mode services in Japan, and technologically simple SMS-based services in Scandinavia, suggests that aggregate and technology-based models are insufficient to explain the mobile commerce (E Pedersen and Methlie). Thus, technological models of the supply side need to be supplemented with the views and impact of perceptions from the demand side of the mobile commerce end user. Hence, this paper lends its idea on understanding the customer satisfaction on demand side within the Indian market.

Management Research Journal, Customer Satisfaction, Mobile Handset End Users, Technological Models, Indian Market, Corporate Brand Equity, Mobile Commerce, Data Transmissions, Information Services, Segmentation Analysis, Cluster Analysis.