A study on consumer decision process for life insurance services

Abstract

The importance of marketing is increasing in every area whether it is a product or service category. It is also an important management technique to make organizations reach not only to the present goals but also to the short and long terms objectives, in the future. I According to customer oriented marketing approach, life insurance companies need to define the decision making process of consumer groups on the choice and purchase of life insurance policies and accordingly to consider redefinition of their products, prices, distribution channels and promotional activities to make consumers decide to buy their products and be satisfied by their policies. Developing Turkish finance sector has also affected the life insurance sector and the market has been trasformed from a producer market to a buyer market. As a result, the definition of consumers' attitudes, needs and preferences has become inevitable for life insurance companiesl Therefore, within the context of this study, the consumer's decision making process for life insurance services is determined. Turkish people's knowledge about insurance services and their consumption habit are also determined as a subgoal of this study. The primary data of the study show that Turkish people have low degree of awareness of insurance services and they have low consumption habit. Most customers buy a life policy in order to secure the future or to be protected from risk. The consumption tendency for life insurance services is high within males, married people, 36-45 age group and within people who have a total monthly family income of less than 1.000.000 TL. It is also high within primary school and below educated group and among professionals, housewives, retired people and students. The lack of marketing concept for life insurance companies and the lack of information and of confidence in companies for consumers are the main problems of Turkish life insurance sector. Operating with the marketing concept; accordingly product differentiation to fulfill consumers' needs and to hedge against inflation, intensive promotional and introductional activities by means of well-trained staff are the immediate solutions for the above problems. First four chapters of this study include the literature review a~out services and life insurance marketing. Last two chapters include the field study that is conducted among 248 respondents through the use of self-administrated questionnaires.