Perplexing Choices: Understanding the Relationship Between Telecommunications Consumers and Service Providers

Perplexing Choices follows the research report prepared for Communications Alliance in 2008, Preparing for the Broadband World: Fostering Consumer Confidence Through Collaboration and Partnerships. This first report suggested that the volume of the complaint issues reported by the Telecommunications Industry Ombudsman can be interpreted as a symptom of proliferating complexities in the telecommunications sector. It observed that consumers can be quite literally overwhelmed by the information available in the telecommunications sector, and that a new conceptualisation of consumer dissatisfaction is needed. Dissatisfaction is the gap between consumer expectations and service delivery, and can be created and exacerbated in various ways. Consumer expectation may be unrealistic, but this misapprehension may be attributed to hyperbolic advertising and marketing; to unreasonable and, indeed, impossible demands by purchasers; or a combination thereof.