Branding a New Life Insurance Company

7/27/2019 Branding a New Life Insurance Company

1/8

Branding A New LifeInsurance Company in

BangladeshBuilding Customer Based Brand Equity

9/20/2013

Sabila Muntaha


2/8

Background of Life Insurance:

Life insurance is the protection against the loss of income that would result if the insured passed

away. The named beneficiary receives the proceeds and is thereby safeguarded from the financial

impact of the death of the insured. The goal of life insurance is to provide a measure of financial

security for insured family after he or she die. So before purchasing a life insurance policy one

should consider his or her financial situation and the standard of living he or she wants to

maintain for his or her dependents or survivors.

Life is one of the big question mark: Will you be happy? Will you find love? Who knows? The

only thing we can be sure of in life is that someday it will end. When, where and how are yet to

be played out.

Your hope is that we die old and wealthy, able to leave your children enough money and will

able to give them a head start on a successful life. But thing dont always work out that way.

Anything can be happen in any time even while crossing the road you can face accident and caninstantly die.

Sure , its a morbid thought, but it makes you wonder how your family would get by without

you. Would they have enough money to keep the house? Could the kids pay their own way

through University?

Life insurance should really be called death insurance. Like other types of insurance, life

insurance is protection against the unknown. When you buy life insurance, you are paying for the

peace of mind that your family will be taken care of in the event of your sudden demise. Life

insurance is the life jacket in the fishing boat. You hope to never have to use it, but its nice to

know its there.Some people call life insurance gambling. They think that youre throwing bunch of money on

the off chance that youll die young. But when life insurance is handled correctly, It is not

gambling at all. Its simply part of a larger economicplan whose goal is the financial security of

your family.

In Bangladesh the insurance business, after the early stage of dislocation, adventure and

experimentation through half a century has now being established as a nascent industry

distributed between the public and private sectors. A total of 62 insurance companies are

operating in Bangladesh till date. Of these companies 43 are general insurance companies, 17

are life insurance companies and 2 state owned insurance companies.In a developing country like Bangladesh insurance companies are playing a very important role

in the economy. Though life insurance companies has very prospect in the economy but for some

reason its totally failed to achieve its goal. Insurance is a service industry . Providing social and

economic benefit is more weighted than the profit motive. Upon opening up of the life insurance

market, whoever can offer better service, ensure prompts settlement of claim and sell the same

product at a lower premium will thrive and prosper.


3/8

Branding

To understand branding, it is important to know what brands are. A brand is the idea or image of

a specific product or service that consumers connect with, by identifying the name, logo, slogan

or design of the company who owns the idea or image. Branding is when that idea or image is

marketed so that it is recognizable by more and more people, and identified with a certain service

or product when there are many other companies offering the same service or product.

Advertising professionals work on branding not only to build recognition, but also to build good

reputations and set of standards to which the company should strive to maintain or surpass.

Branding is also a way to build an important company asset, which is a good reputation. Whether

a company has no reputation, or a less than stellar reputation, branding can help change that.

Branding can build an expectation about the company services or products, and can encourage

the company to maintain that expectation, or exceed them, bringing better products and service

to the market place.

As in any business, a professional services firm or organization must win customers hearts andminds by building a brand that will attract customers to the business. By taking a strategic

approach to define who you are and why customers should business with you, you can create

your brand identity- how you want to be perceived. Once this is in place, the challenge is to align

the brand image- how you are perceived with your brand identity. Many elements work together

to build and reinforce a brand, including marketing communications, customer relationships,

quality and value.

Branding a Life Insurance Company:

Before we purchase somethingwe seek an example of what we can expect. Sometimes this isvery tangible. For example, when we purchase a car, we can test drive it, take it home show our

friends and family and attain a real insight into what a purchase would deliver to us. But in the

service sector, this insight is often impossible to truly experience what would be delivered upon

proper engagement of a service business. One of the challenges in marketing services is that they

are less tangible than products and more likely to vary in quality, depending on the particular

person or people providing them. For that reason, branding can be particularly important to

service firms as a way to address intangibility and variability problems. Brand symbols may also

be especially important, because they help to make the abstract nature of services more concrete.

Brands can help to identify and provide meaning to the different services provided by a firm. For

example , branding has become especially important in financial services, to help organize and

label the myriad new offerings in a manner that consumers can understand.

Branding a service can also be an effective way to signal to consumers that the firm has designed

a particular service offering that is special and deserving of its name.


4/8

As a life insurance is a service and it is intangible, a brand is even more important in the services

business than it is in a product business. The brand represents everything the life insurance

company stands for in the marketplace. Without tangible products to present to a prospect, a

brand helps convince people of what you can do and how well you can do it. Services are sold on

reputation and trust, and a brand helps establishing these qualities in the minds of our prospects.

So we must manage it and make it work for our insurance company. Building a strong brand is

the goal of many organization. Building a strong brand with significant equity is seen as

providing a host of possible benefits to a firm, including greater customer loyalty and less

vulnerability to competitive marketing actions and marketing crises as well as more favorable

customer response. With this keen to interest in brand building, two question often arise: (1)

What makes a brand strong? And (2) How do you build a strong brand? To help answer both of

these question and to brand a new life insurance company in Bangladesh we can build customer

based brand equity and can take help from the brand building blocks.

Building Customer based Brand Equity:

Building a strong brand has been shown to provide numerous financial rewards to firms, and has

become a top priority for many organizations. According to the model, building a strong brand

involves four steps:

(1) Establishing the proper brand identity that is establishing breadth and depth of brand

awareness,

(2) Creating the appropriate brand meaning through strong favorable and unique brand

associations.

(3) Eliciting positive, accessible brand responses.

(4) Forging brand relationships with customers that are characterized by intense, active loyalty.

Achieving these four steps, in turn, involves establishing six brand- building blocksbrand

salience, brand performance, brand imagery, brand judgments, brand feelings and brand

resonance.

Brand Salience

Achieving the right brand identity involves creating brand salience. Brand salience relates to

aspect of customer awareness of the brand. How easily and often is the brand evoked under

various situations or circumstances? To what extent is the brand top- of- mind and easily recalled

or recognized? What types of cues or reminder are necessary? How pervasive is brand

awareness?


5/8

Formally, brand awareness refers to customers ability to recall and recognize a brand. Brand

awareness is more than just the fact that customers know a brand name and the fact that they

have previously seen it, perhaps even many times. Brand awareness also involves linking the

brand- brand name, logo, symbol and so forth. In particular, building brand awareness involves

making sure that customers understand the service of the insurance which the company

competes. There must be clear link to the services that the company sold under the brand name.

At a broader, more abstract level, however. building brand salience also means ensuring that

customers know which of their needs the company is designed to satisfy- through their insurance

policies. In other word what basic function does the brand provide for customers. To help to

create brand salience and achieve consistency across all our outbound communications in

Bangladesh we have to develop a marketing architecture which communicates the key message

to each our primary target. Our website, press releases and other forms of communication should

leverage our messaging and communicate our value to our customers. We have to use the power

of media such as Newspaper, Magazines Billboards Television and Radio Commercials,

Brand Performance:

The service that the company will provide itself at the heart of brand equity, as it is the primary

influence of what consumers experience with a brand, what they hear about the service of the

company from others, and what the company can tell customers about the brand in their

communication. Designing and delivering insurance policies that fully satisfies consumers

needs and wants is a prerequisite for successful marketing.

Brand performance relates to the ways in which the company attempts to meet customers more

functional needs. Thus, brand performance refers to the intrinsic properties of the brand in termsof inherent service characteristics. How well does the brand rate on objective assessments of

service quality of the company? To what extent do the insurance policies satisfy the utilitarian

and economic needs and wants of customers in its service?

The company has to keep that in their mind that consumers often have related association with

the service interaction they have with the brand. Along those linesservice effectiveness refers to

how completely the brand satisfies customers service requirements. Service efficiency refers to

the manner in which these services are delivered in terms of speed, responsiveness, and so forth.

Finally,service empathy refers to the extent to which service providers are seen as trusting,

caring, and having the customers interest in mind.

Brand Imagery:

Brand imagery deals with the extrinsic properties of the service, including the ways in which the

brand attempts to meet customers psychological or social needs. Brand imagery is how people

think about a brand abstractly rather than what they think the brand actually does. Thus, imagery

refers to more intangible aspects of the brand. One set of brand imagery association involves the


6/8

type of person or organization who uses the brand. This imagery result in a profile or mental

image by customers who have life insurance policy or more aspirational , idealized customer. In

a business to business setting , user imagery might relate to the size of the company. The

company may also take on personality traits and values similar to those of people. Companys

personality is often related to the more descriptive usage imagery but involves much richer, more

contextual information like sincerity, competence, sophistication etc.

Brand Judgment:

Brand judgment focus upon customerspersonal opinion and evaluation with regard to the brand.

Brand judgments involve how customers put together all the different performance and imagery

associations for the brand to form different kinds of opinions. Customers may make all types of

summery respect to a brand, but in terms of creating a strong brand they considerBrand quality

which refersthe companys service quality. Other notable attitudes related to quality pertain to

perceptions of value and satisfaction.Brand credibility refers to the extent to which the companyas a whole is seen as credible in terms of three dimensions- perceived expertise, trust worthiness

and likability. In other word, to what brand seen as (1) Competent, a market leader. (2)

dependable and sensitive to the interest of insured person and (3) Worth having a insurance

policy.Brand consideration depends in part on how personally relevant customers find the

insurance company that is the extent to which they view the company as being appropriate and

meaningful for them. Thus, customers often make an appraisal as to whether they have any

personal interest in brand and whether they would or should use their insurance policy.Brand

superiority Lastly, superiority relates to the extent to which customers view the company as

unique as and better than other brands. In other words, does the customer believe that the

company offers advantages that are better than its competitors? Superiority is absolutely critical

in terms of building intense and active relationship with customers and will depend to a great

degree on relationship between customers and the company.

Brand feelings:

Brand feelings are customers emotional responses and reaction with respect to the brand. Brand

feelings also relate to the what feelings are evoked by the marketing program for the brand or by

others means? How does the brand affect customers feelings about themselves and their

relationship with others? These feelings can be mild or intense, positive or negative, in nature.

As a insured of a life insurance company the customer have to feel warmth that refers sosoothing types of feelings. The extent to which the company makes consumers feels a sense of

calm or peacefulness. Consumers may feel sentimental, warmhearted or affectionate about the

company and their insurance policies.Fun that refers the feeling of amused, lighthearted, tension

free, joyous, and cheerful and so on.Excitementrefers tothe extent to which the company makes

consumers feel that they are experiencing something special, that feeling may result a sense of

being alive. Security The feeling of security occur when the company produces a feeling of


7/8

safety, comfort, and assurance in the customer who associates the brand with the elimination of

worries or concerns they might otherwise have felt. This is the strongest and most important

feelings that a insured customer have to feel for their insurance company. Social approvalrefers

when the company results in consumers feeling positively about the reaction to them; that is,

when consumers feel that other look favorably to their decision of having an insurance policy in

this company. Self respectoccurs when the company makes consumers feel better about them,

for example when consumers feel a sense of pride, accomplishment or fulfillment after having a

policy in this company.

Brand Resonance:

The final step of the model, brand relationships, focuses upon the ultimate relationship and level

of identification that the customers has with the company. Brand resonance refers to the nature of

the relationship that customers have with the company and the extent to which they feel that theyare in synch with the company. It characterized in terms of intensity or the depth of the

psychological bond that the customers have with the company as well as the level of activity

engendered by this loyalty. The brand may also take on broader meaning to the customer in

termers of a sense of community whereby customers feel a kinship or affiliation with the

company and talks positively about the company to others and indirectly influence others to

having a life insurance policy from that specific company. Some people mistakenly think that a

brand is about creating a logo and a look and feel for all marketing materials. Having consistent

visual is important, but brand is so much more. our brand image is the sum of how all our

prospects and clients view our firm and our services. Its how our clients think about us when

they speak about our company to their colleagues and partners. It includes the feelings, attitudes,and perceptions our prospects and clients have about the company. To shape the company to our

desired image, we have to strive for consistency.


8/8

While the company name, logo, tagline, website and other marketing and promotional materials

help to shape any brand, a life insurance company specially in Indian subcontinent like

Bangladesh it is heavily influenced by the personal interactions between the individuals in the

company and the customer. Everyone in the company must live the brand every day. At a

minimum employees need to provide quality services and solutions in our core competencies.

However in todays highly competitive environment, perceived value of services is often not

enough. Customers must perceive the value of the total customer experience. It is up to the sales

representative and other people participating in a service to earn customer trust. Interpersonal

skills play a key role, how does our sales team listen to customer needs? Do they convincingly

demonstrate expertise in discussions and presentation of potential solution approaches? How

well they listen, their level of empathy and interest in the customers problem, their ability to

persuade, how they handle disagreements and even how they influence the sale, repeat business

and your brand.

To help the staff live the brand, many professional services organizations develop customer

interaction processes and codes conduct and invest in employees training. Every positive

interaction with prospects and clients contributes to winning trust.

Winning a customers trust leads to more business with the same customer referrals to new

customers. With prosperous organizations, the cycle repeats itself again and again. Satisfied

customers provide referrals and those new satisfied customers provide more referrals. Thats

how a Life insurance company builds a lasting, solid reputation, and that is the proof of a strong

professional brand.

Branding a New Life Insurance Company

Documents

Transcript of Branding a New Life Insurance Company