Conceptualizing Strategic Market Orientation and Its Relationship with Performance in Iranian Insurance Industry

Understanding the dimensions of strategic market orientation is crucial in industries where competition is high and customers have different and diverse needs and wants. Acquiring market information and responding accordingly is the philosophy of market orientation. The main purpose of this study is to conceptualize strategic market orientation and its relationship with performance in the Iranian insurance industry.

The study population of this descriptive survey is 16681 managers of public and private insurance agencies in the provinces of Tehran, Khorasan-e- Razavi, Isfahan, Fars, Azerbaijan-e-sharghi and Khuzestan. Three hundred agencies using the stratified random sampling method participated in this survey and completed the questionnaires. The validity of the questionnaire was confirmed through content and construct validity tests and its reliability was confirmed through Cronbach's alpha coefficient. Collected data was analyzed through structural equation modeling using AMOS18 to test hypotheses of research.

Strategic market orientation has positive impact on financial and nonfinancial performance of insurance companies. The mediating role of nonfinancial performance between strategic market orientation and financial performance was also confirmed.

Gathering and analyzing customer and competitor information and then designing a market-oriented strategy tailored to meet environmental opportunities and threats and providing process, system, and behavioral infrastructure to implement this strategy improve financial and non-financial indicators in the Iranian insurance industry.