Why some customers decide to stay withexisting service provider after having thought of switchinghas apparently not been examined adequately in extantresearch. The purpose of this research is to identifyfactors relevant to building constructs to representswitching barriers in online retail stock trading industryin Hong Kong. Review of extant literature, development ofa questionnaire and focus group interviews are the threeprincipal methods used for this research. Four factors thatare relevant for measuring switching barriers areidentified: two positive barriers involve service recoveryand trust and two negative barriers relate to higherswitching costs and lack of attractive alternatives
