Buyer seller relationships in the UK insurance market: Does performance match market share?
- PDF / 127,101 Bytes
- 9 Pages / 595 x 765 pts Page_size
- 42 Downloads / 191 Views
Carolyn Kennington is a management lecturer at Sems, University of Surrey. She has taught at Sems for five years and is the lead tutor for International Business Management and International Trade modules. Past research includes investigations into management skills and bank marketing and management in Poland.
Harjit Sekhon has worked in the insurance industry for various organisations for some years on the marketing and research side. He has recently accepted his first lecturing post at the London Institute. Previously he has investigated the validity of the marketing mix within the financial services sector.
Abstract The purpose of this paper is to measure the performance of firms in the group permanent health insurance sector and to compare this to market share rankings. As most sales in this sector occur through intermediaries the key performance indicators should be the perceptions of buyers among this group. The research conducted uses the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing group (IMP, 1984) model to measure the performance of firms through the perceptions of independent financial advisers (IFAs) against the key relationship marketing factors. The research was conducted by an agency and includes telephone interviews with 100 buyers. The results show that there are significant differences between the ratings for the variables in the IMP model of relationship marketing. The results also show significant relationships between performance and market share for some of the relationship marketing variables. This research provides support for the use of the IMP model in this sector but also leads to a number of questions that need further research.
INTRODUCTION
Carolyn Kennington SEMS, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 7XH. Tel: +44(0)1483 259 347; Fax: +44(0)1483 259 511; E-mail: [email protected]
40
The focus for business-to-business marketing has been shifting to relationship marketing for some time.1–3 In financial services sales are both direct to the consumer and through intermediaries (also referred to as customers in this paper), which makes marketing more complex. Therefore, the importance of relationships exists at two levels; firms must strive to develop relationships with both consumers and customers. Relationship marketing with
Journal of Financial Services Marketing
Vol. 5, 1, 40–48
consumers has been recommended for firms in the industry4 but the use of intermediaries often makes industrial relationship maintenance the most important type of marketing for supplier firms. This research investigates the group permanent health insurance sector from the perspective of relationship marketing and the perceptions of intermediaries. Stone and Gamble (1998)5 evaluated the use and effectiveness of direct communication among insurers, banks and building societies. They found that good customer management can be effective
# Henry Stewart Publications 1363-0539 (2000)
Buyer seller relationships in the UK insurance market: Does performance match market share?
through a number of direc
Data Loading...
