Understanding the Process of Brand Phobia Formation among Customers of Insurance Companies

The present study examines the understanding of brand phobia formation process among customers of insurance companies in Ilam in 2020 using exploratory analysis. This research is applied in terms of purpose and in terms of data collection is an exploratoryone. The qualitative part is done through interviews and the quantitative part is descriptive survey. The statistical sample in the qualitative part includes 10 specialists, experts, insurance and marketing brokers that selected by targeted sampling method and in the quantitative part includes insurance customers in Ilam city. 384 people were selected by simple random sampling method for quantitative part. The data collection tool was document review, interview and researcher-made questionnaire. In the qualitative part, validity was confirmed based on peer review and in the quantitative part based on content validity. The reliability in the qualitative part was based on the agreement coefficient of colleagues and in the quantitative part based on Cronbach's alpha coefficient. The analysis of this data in the qualitative part was done using the analysis and coding of interviews and in the quantitative part through one-sample t-test and factor analysis by spss21 and Amos software. Accordingly, 71 effective items, in understanding the process of brand phobia formation, were coded and categorized. The results showed that brand phobia among customers includes concepts such as lower payment for damages, lack of insurance knowledge, lack of trust in not providing proper services, lower insurer commitment and fear of false promises. Causal factors include; legal errors, personal underlying factors, social or moral errors, human rights. Underlying factors include; bureaucracy, notoriety or lack of reputation, insurers' level of awareness, economic problems, distrust, incomplete information dissemination and non-observance of Work principles. Intervening factors include; cultural issues, advertising and multiplicity of insurance branches. Strategies include; staff training, accelerating service delivery, awareness raising, building trust, providing diverse services and customer orientation and finally consequences include; stopping brand support, negative WoM (word of mouth), brand hatred and brand phobia development.