Internet has significantly changed the individuals' lifestyles and lots of aspects of society, as well as having a major impact on economic growth and sustainable development. However, the Internet usage and diffusion vary greatly depending on economic and social conditions of the country. In the situation we are in, it seems clear that internet access is so necessary, even more than ever before, that it has become an inevitable tool in our daily routine. Fixed broadband Internet access services have experienced steady annual growth during the last years in Albania. This study is conducted to identify customers view regarding network quality, price perception and customer satisfaction for Internet Service Providers in Albania. The target population of this study is comprised by individuals who use a fixed broadband Internet line. The results of descriptive analysis indicated that 52.4% of the respondents are satisfied with the Internet Service Provider offering the services, for 51% of the respondents the price charged by their Internet Service Provider is reasonable, and 51.7% can access the network at any time without delay. The results of logistic regression model indicated that network quality and price perception were positively related to customer satisfaction, whereas monthly payment for the Internet service was negatively related to customer satisfaction. The findings of this study provide useful information for customers, government institutions, and top managers of Internet Service Providers.
Internet has revolutionized communications
and methods of commerce by allowing
various computer networks around the world to
interconnect. Internet firstly emerged in the
United States in the early 1970s but did not
become visible to the public until the early
1990s. By 2020, more than half of the world’s
population, or approximately 4.5 billion people
were estimated to have access to the Internet
[
The use of technology has gone through a rapid growth over the last decade in almost all countries in the world. What the internet enables us is not only comprehensive information but also communication and business continuity wherever we are. Thus, it is worth to highlight that having internet access nowadays is really important.
Internet Service Provider (ISP) is a company
that offers people or businesses internet access
as well as other internet services. “The World”
was the first commercial ISP in the world that
provided a direct connection to the internet with
its first customer logging in in November 1989.
By the late 1990s there were approximately
10,000 ISPs around the world, more than half
located in the United States [
Dial-up is where the connection with
internet got started. It required a phone-line to
operate, so phone calls could not be made using
a landline while the Internet was in use. With
dial up the maximum speed is 56 kbps,
relatively slow. At this speed, a single
lowquality song would take around 10 minutes to
download it at full speed. Speed was a
significant issue in the early times. The next
development of home browsing was the
introduction of broadband and wireless Internet
[
The earliest broadband was available by
1996, in North America. In the early 2000s
dialup started to be replaced by broadband as much
as between 2000-2001 the number of
subscriptions increased by 50%. By 2010 over
65% of U.S households had adopted fixed
broadband. Fixed broadband access networks
vary greatly in speed and other characteristics
[
Internet is a powerful technology that has
significant economic effect, has become an
incredibly valuable informational resource and
will have a long-term impact on the quality of
life in developing countries [
The aim of this paper is to identify factors that influence the customer satisfaction for Internet Service Providers in Albania. The factors considered in this study are network quality, price perception, monthly payment for the Internet service and experience with an Internet Service Provider.
The internet has brought significant changes
also to the Albanian Society and economy. The
first international connection to the internet in
Albania was made in 1993 [
Fixed broadband access services have
experienced steady annual growth especially
during the period of time 2013-2019. All major
operators are noted to have a positive progress
in recent years and the largest increase has
been recorded by "other operators", number of
subscribers of which during 2019 has been
increased by 87% compared to 2018. The
number of subscribers with fixed broadband
access at the end of 2019 reached about 433
thousand, which is an increase of about 20%
compared to 2018. Main fixed broadband
operators include ALBtelecom with a share of
30.6% and Abcom with a share of 17.13%,
ASC/Tring with 12%, as well as Abissnet with
9%, Nisatel 3% and Digicom 4%. The rest of
the market is divided into alternative
operators that offer Internet broadband, based
on fixed networks [
The average penetration rate through fixed networks in urban area was 25%, and in rural areas was 5%.
Fixed broadband penetration remains well
below the EU average and other penetration
levels of neighboring countries, albeit growing
by 10%-15% annually [
The main technology that is used to deliver fixed broadband connections is via DSL followed by FTTH/FTTB. About 49% of the total connections are DSL and 29% are optic fibers. Optic fibers connections are increased by 4% compared to year 2018. The provision of 2 The indicator includes internet access with broadband access from fixed network or wireless and satellite service. Mobile network broadband access is not included. internet services through fiber optics offers the provision of service with the highest quality and stability.
As regard to fixed broadband by download
speed, AKEP (Electronic and Postal
Communications Authority) reported that the
most commonly used speed is 4-10 Mbps with
55% of subscribers on 2019. The data show that
the number of fixed broadband subscribers with
speeds lower than 4 Mbps is decreased while
for speeds above 4 Mbps, it is increased. Thus,
even the speed of internet seems to have an
upward trend [
According to [
Total revenues from fixed broadband
Internet services at the end of 2019 were 8.69
billion ALL, with an increase of about 5%
compared to 2018 [
According to [
Customer satisfaction is the central element
of the marketing concepts. According to [
Customer satisfaction with the purchase is
determined by how tightly consumers’
expectation is linked with the perceived
performance of the product. A satisfied
consumer is more likely to spread positive
word-of-mouth and information received
through word-of-mouth are more credible than
a commercial advertisement [
Consumer satisfaction is often measured by
how the product or service in question meets
expectations [
In the telecommunications market, network
quality is one of the most important drivers of
overall service quality [
Price is also an important driver for
consumers to make buying decisions.
According to [
Customer value is evaluated on the benefit
of the product or service that is perceived by the
customers. The price of the product determines
the value of the customers. Customers seek the
product and services prior to the payment of the
price. If the product price meets the
expectations of the customers, the value will
increase simultaneously otherwise it may
decline. However, it is also very important to
maintain the relationship with the customers
along with price, product and so on [
With regards to price perception, although
Internet broadband users are willing to pay
more for better service, they will consider
changing to another provider because of the
price factor [
In the study of [
The findings of [
The study of [
In the study of [
Study of [
This study targets the family member over the age of 18 with a fixed Broadband Internet connection at their home and that use the Internet at least once a month. All data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire in the period 10 to 25 January 2021. Non-probability sampling (purposive sampling) was used to gather the data. Out of 650 distributed questionnaires, only 147 questionnaires were returned completed and valid to use for data analysis.
The questionnaire is designed in four parts. The first part includes questions about experience, type of link and speed of link, monthly payment, and also name and location of ISP. The second part of the questionnaire consists of questions about the network quality (4 items), price perception (5 items) and customer satisfaction (1 item). The third part of the questionnaire includes questions about the personal characteristics of the respondents such as age, gender, education level, family monthly income level. An open question about additional comments about the ISP is included in the questionnaire.
The items of the second section of the
questionnaire were adopted from the literature
([
To study the influence of network quality
and price perception on customer satisfaction,
the logistic regression analysis was used. A
logistic regression model with a binary
response was modeled. For the data analysis,
the response was coded as 1 or 0, respectively.
Logistic regression is recommended over linear
regression model when modeling binary
responses and estimates probabilities of the
response occurring [
p ln 1 p 0 1x1 2 x2 ... k xk where p is the estimated probability that the customer is satisfied, and x1, x2, ..., xk are independent variables.
The estimated probability of the response occurring (p) divided by the probability of it nor occurring (1 – p) is called the odds ratio. Maximum likelihood method is used to estimate the odds ratios of the model. Values of odds ratios lower than 1 indicate negative association, odds ratios equal to 1 indicate no association, and odds ratios higher than 1 indicate positive association between independent variables and the dependent variable of the model.
STATA12 was used to data analysis.
The respondents were from Tirana (49.7%) and 23.2% from Durres, 57.8% were female, 47.6% were between 18 and 25 years old and 25.2% were between 26 and 35 years old. About 36.7% of the respondents hold an university diploma, and 49% a master diploma. Majority of the respondents (46.3%) were employed in public sector, 24.5% work in public sector and 13.6% were students. Around 34.7% of the respondents have declared family monthly income between ALL 60,001 and 90,000, and 31.3% less than ALL 60,000.
Also, around 21% of the respondents have been using at home Internet service for less than 1 year, and 17.7% for 1 to 2 years and 30.6% for more than 3 years (Figure 3).
About 26.5% of the respondents use the service of Albtelecom, 17% ABCom, 13% Tring, 8% Abissnet and 7.5% DigiCom (Figure 4).
Related to monthly payment for the Internet service, 43.5% of the respondents pay between ALL 1001 and 1500, and 38% pay between ALL 1501 and 2000 (Figure 5).
Table 1 shows the results about four items of network quality. The results indicate that 43.5% of the respondents have declared that the upload and download speed of t he network is always strong, 39.4% have declared that the uptime of the network is always available without interruption, 42.1% that the connection quality is always reliable and 51.7% that they can access the network at any time without delay. Also, all the items have Cronbach’s alpha value higher than 0.84, so their reliability is good.
Table 2 shows the results about five items of price perception. The results indicate that 51% of the respondents have declared that the price charged by their Internet Service Provider is reasonable, 35.3% have declared that the service’s price of their Internet Service Provider is cheaper than others, 42.2% that the service supplied by their Internet Service Provider is equivalent to its price, 44.2% that service offered by their Internet Service Provider is better value for money than what they would pay for the same service of others, and 37.4% that they are willing to pay more for better service quality. Also, four items have Cronbach’s alpha value higher than the 34.69% 19.05% 27.21% 12.24% 19.05% 30.61% 33.33% 8.84% 17.69% 23.81% 39.46% 12.24% generally accepted lower value of 0.7.
Item The price charged by your Internet Service Provider is reasonable.
The service’s price of your Internet Service Provider is cheaper than others.
Service supplied by your Internet Service Provider is equivalent to its price.
Service offered b y your Internet Service Provider is better value for money than what you would pay for the same service of others.
You are willing to pay more for better service quality.
The results of binary logistic regression
model, shown in Table 3, indicate that the
model was statistically significant (LR
chisquare (8) = 98.63, p < 0.05). The value of
Pseudo-R2 was 48.48% and the percentage of
cases correctly classified was 83.67. According
to [
The odds ratios (values) indicated that the
network quality was positively related to
customer satisfaction, that is, customers that
have experienced very good network quality
were more likely to be satisfied with the
Internet service. This finding is consistent with
the results of [
Price perception was positively related to
customer satisfaction, that is, customers that
have experienced a high value for the Internet
service were more likely to be satisfied with the
service. This finding is consistent with the
results of [
Experience (time using the Internet Service) of the customer was not significant at 5% level. However, experienced customers were less likely to be satisfied with at home Internet service.
Also, monthly payment for at home Internet service was statistically significant at 5% level and negatively related to customer satisfaction, that is, the customer that pay more for the service were less likely to be satisfied customers.
The main objective of this study is to analyze the ISPs in Albania related to network quality, price perception and customer satisfaction.
Based on the results of this study, about 52.4% of the respondents are satisfied with the Internet Service Provider offering the service; for 51% of the respondents the price charged by their Internet Service Provider is reasonable, and 37.4% that they are willing to pay more for better service quality; 51.7% of the respondents can access the network at any time without delay and the upload and download speed of the network is always strong for about 43.5% of them.
The results of logistic regression model indicated that network quality and price perception were positively related to customer satisfaction, whereas monthly payment for the Internet service was negatively related to customer satisfaction at 5% level. There results indicate that the customers that have experienced very good network quality and high value for the service were more likely to be satisfied for the Internet service, while the customers that pay more for the Internet service were less likely to be satisfied customers.
The findings of this study provide useful information for customers, government institutions, and managers of Internet Service Providers. It will be helpful for businesses to know network quality and consumers' price perceptions for improving network quality and for realizing their pricing strategies.
This study has some limitation. Firstly, only four factors are studied. Secondly, the sample was small and it is not representative for all the country. Thirdly, the non-probability sampling was used to gather the data in short time.
In the future, the research can be performed to identify other factors such as service quality, perceived value, switching cost, trust, etc., that can influence the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty using structural equation modeling.