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The analysis and study of customer behavior and its impact on the income of service providers in the telecommunication network systems have become in the last years a more attractive field and the game theory is considered as a mathematical tool the most used in this field. Consumers’ confusion means disrupting their mental process and preventing them from making an optimal decision. According to (Neumann & Morgenstern, 2004), once the information presented to consumers about a subscription offer is ambiguous or incomplete, it does not allow them to rationalize the choice of the best decision.
The growth that the telecommunication network sector has experienced in recent years has led it to be more dynamic, and it is highly possible for Internet service providers in this field to follow policies or scenarios where decision would be very difficult and customers will face an ambiguity that makes them more confusing. This confusion can be defined as the degree to which a customer can process offers on homogeneous services that are unclear or ambiguous. In general, customers may be confused due to many factors; such as; non-transparent pricing, ambiguous information or misrepresentation of offers, complexity of the environment and incorrect interpretation (Simon, 1962), (Chongwatpol, 2013). These different factors cause inaccuracy and lack of understanding on the part of consumers, and have a big effect on its gain.
In telecommunication Networks Internet service providers adapt their decision-making strategies to the market situation to have an optimal benefit by meeting the requirements and preferences of customers. These providers, which are supposedly rational, offer customers a set of services characterized by price and quality of service. The offers (price, QoS, promotion...) can be similar between the various Internet service providers (ISPs) of the system, which leads to a probable and disturbing confusion of the customers' behavior. The way Internet service providers follow to disseminate the rate structure is often very complicated, the loyalty and inter-service variation offerings make it difficult for consumers to understand the type of subscription and get the best ratio price-QoS.
Service providers in the telecommunication Networks have an interest in creating more confusion (Ait Omar, Outanoute, Baslam, Fakir, & Bouikhalne, 2017) and in drawing the attention of the confused consumers to their offers in the system. This concern creates a field of competition between these internet service providers (ISPs) to model as a non-cooperative game. This modeling will examine the effect of Internet service providers’ price and QoS strategies on customer decision-making.
To clarify the purpose of our research, this work aims to answer the following questions: