Consumer switching experiences

We have published a technical paper on consumer switching experiences in the New Zealand retail electricity market. The technical paper is accompanied by a laypersons' guide as well as a consumers' guide. The laypersons' guide provides a non-technical summary of selected aspects of the technical paper. In addition, the consumers' guide focuses on specific retail customer results that provide insight on retail customers' habits in the retail market. 

To encourage further research, the technical paper targets economists who may be interested in pursuing further research on retailer choice. It provides an econometric analysis of survey results that examine various aspects of the behaviours, attitudes and perceptions of retail customers towards retailer choice. The study applies discrete choice modelling to associate the retail customer’s selection of a retailer with the retail customer’s socioeconomic characteristics, household composition, perceptions of the selected retailer, attitudes toward switching to other retailers and the use of online price comparison tools in search of retail offers. The key findings of the study characterise the retail customer types who are more inclined to switch to other retailers or stay with their existing retailer when customer and retailer attributes are introduced to the analysis.