Designing a Branding Model for Commercial Insurance Companies in Iran With the Help of a Mixed Research Method

One of the significant challenges of service marketing and also its distinctive feature is being intangible. Because of this difficulty, marketing and selling services are more complicated than commodities, and success in it requires more effective branding. Good brands have loyal consumers. Brands are so valuable that some companies add their brand value to their balance sheets as an intangible asset. Branding is a set of strategies that identifies one brand and differentiates it from other competitors’ brand. At present, two prominent features of the insurance industry in Iran are the competitive market (because of the existence of over 20 insurance companies and low market size) and the non-differentiation of insurance policies offered by insurance companies, decreasing operational profit. Practically companies in the insurance industry are in a price war. With this situation, the managers of the insurance companies are not only under increasing pressure to acquiring a market share but also they have problems to communicate with their current customers. One of the ways that insurance companies have used to tackle these problems is brand restructuring. The overall purpose of this study is to design a model of service branding in commercial insurance companies in Iran. Based on the purpose, the method of the present study is a mixed method (exploratory and descriptive-survey) and based on collecting data method is field-library. The research was conducted in the first phase based on the qualitative approach using the grounded theory method. In the qualitative phase, 40 interviews were conducted with insurance industry experts (mainly middle and operational / PR managers). As a result, the most important indicators of effective branding in commercial insurance companies were extracted. In the second phase of the research to determine the priority and importance of the variables, 420 questionnaires were distributed among the population, which 354 questionnaires were completed and gathered (according to the sample size). Data were analyzed using exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis. In the qualitative part of the research has been identified 132 concepts, 25 categories, and seven general axes for the branding of commercial insurance companies including technical, support and management capabilities, as well as service marketing mix, environmental conditions, Internal Sales and Marketing Strategy. The results of the second phase of the study indicate that the indexes of each of the seven factors have factor-loading more than 0.40 and the t-value for each of factors is more than 1.96, which is valid. The best rank belongs to technical capabilities (3.91) and then support capabilities (3.70), service marketing mix (3.66), environmental conditions (3.45), internal marketing (3.38), management capabilities (3.23) and sales strategy (3.18). They are all meaningful. The ranking of the factors influencing on the branding of insurance companies shows that technical capabilities (issues related to issuance and risk management) have the most impact on branding and the lowest impact belong to sales strategies. Perhaps one of the reasons for the less priority of sales strategies in this study "compared to other factors" does not trust the insurance companies to marketing activities, because from the perspective of experts of the insurance industry, technical aspects of insurance are the most importance. From the experts' point of view, technical issues should be at the heart of the branding of insurance companies and their differentiation. Insurance companies should focus on their technical issues. In this ranking, the next importance relates to the support capabilities of the insurance companies, which is not as high as the technical capabilities but secondarily. In other words, financial and investment management, information technology, and R&D are very important. The important of them may be due to the concern of insurance companies about paying loss and making an appropriate decision about investments. Financial and investment management is one of the essential aspects that have a significant impact on the branding of an insurance company. At present, the public perception of insurance companies is that they receive premiums, so they try to make as little payment as possible. If insurance companies: 1) receive a premium based on risk (technical capability), 2) deal with the loss and decide to pay fairly and adhere to the standards (insurance capability), and 3) make decision about investment appropriately, They can then pay damages in a way that will gradually erode the negative public image of themselves and build a more favorable image of their brand. Strategic marketing is the next important factor. One of the significant weaknesses of insurance companies is, not defining their target market and do not make differentiated in their product seriously (all insurance companies policies are more or less similar, and they offer identical insurance). Given the importance of rates and processes in this area, it seems justified to rank high. Not being first in the ranking (management capabilities and sales strategies) does not show less effect of them on branding. But it shows the importance of environmental and internal marketing conditions in the branding of insurance products/services. For example, if a company ignores environmental issues or regulations of the supervisor of the industry, its brand will be quickly threated to severe damage by the media and public. Internal marketing in both divisions (insurance company staff) and (agents and marketers) is also crucial because of the specific nature of the insurance services/products and the specific complexities of it and the need for clarification.