Branding A New Life Insurance Company in Bangladesh

Building Customer Based Brand Equity

9/20/2013 Sabila Muntaha

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 can instantly 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 economic plan 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.

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 and minds 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 something we seek an example of what we can expect. Sometimes this is very 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.

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 blocks brand 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?

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 terms of 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 lines service 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

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 customers personal 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 consider Brand quality which refers the 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 company as 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 so soothing 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. Excitement refers to the 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

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 approval refers 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 respect occurs 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 they are 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.

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.