Title: Predicting opinion leadership based on demographics - a study for mobile telecom services

Authors: Lokesh Jasrai

Addresses: Mittal School of Business, Lovely Professional University, Punjab, India

Abstract: The present study examines the relative influence of demographics in predicting opinion leadership (OL), along with categorising telecom subscribers in low and high OL groups for mobile telecom services. A binomial-logistic regression (LR) is used to predict OL on the basis of gender, age, income, and education level. The results of forward LR method in binomial logistic regression indicate that OL is significantly influenced by gender and age as compared to income and education level. Furthermore, category-wise analysis reveals that 'male' and the age groups of 18-25 years and 26-35 years are opinion leaders for telecom services as compared to other categories of demographics. The Punjab (India) is the study area of the present research. Identification of consumers as opinion leaders could be used as target market and innovators in order to formulate word-of-mouth (WOM) communication and diffusion enhancement strategies in the particular telecom market.

Keywords: demographics; opinion leadership; binomial logistic regression; word-of-mouth communication; diffusion and marketing strategies; forward LR method; target market; telecom service.

DOI: 10.1504/IJPSPM.2024.137196

International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management, 2024 Vol.13 No.2, pp.190 - 207

Received: 13 Mar 2020
Accepted: 27 Jan 2021
Published online: 05 Mar 2024 *

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