24-11-2012, 12:27 PM
Study on CUSTOMER SATISFACTION TOWRADS KOTAK LIFE INSURANCE
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Introduction to the topic
This chapter will outline and overview the research topic and rational of this
study, the objectives and the reason for the personal interest of the author for
this study and will help readers to understand what is going to follow in this
project
Insurance is a federal subject in India and has a history dating back to 1818.
Life and general insurance in India is still a nascent sector with huge
potential for various global players with the life insurance premiums
accounting to 2.5% of the country's GDP while general insurance premiums
to 0.65% of India's GDP.[1]. The Insurance sector in India has gone through a
number of phases and changes, particularly in the recent years when the
Govt. of India in 1999 opened up the insurance sector by allowing private
companies to solicit insurance and also allowing FDI up to 26%.
Definitions and theoretical concept framework
Customer loyalty has been examined by many researchers in the past and
many of them have given various definitions around this concept. According
to Heskett (2002), customer loyalty has been regarded as the sina qua non of
an effective business strategy. Dick and Basu (1994, p.99) give a stronger
conceptualization for customer loyalty. They view it as the “strength of the
relationship between an individual’s relative attitude towards an entity
(brand, Products, store, or vendor) and repeat patronage”.
Customer satisfaction
What is customer satisfaction?
Social psychologists, marketing researchers, and students of consumer
behaviour, have extensively studied the concepts of customer satisfaction
and dissatisfaction. The increasing importance of quality in both Products
and manufacturing industries has also created a proliferation of research,
with more than 15,000 academic and trade articles having been published on
the topic of customer satisfaction in the past two decades (Peterson and
Wilson, 1992). Several conferences have been devoted to the subject and
extensive literature reviews have been published (Day, 1977; Hunt, 1977;
LaTour and Peat, 1979; Smart, 1982; Ross, et al., 1987, Barsky, 1992: Oh
and Parks, 1997) The result of all this research has been the development of
nine distinct theories of customer satisfaction. The majority of these theories
are based on cognitive psychology, some have received moderate attention,
while other theories have been introduced without any empirical research.
Customer perception of value
Theoretical concept framework and definitions
The creation of consumer value has been taken into consideration from many
managers during the 1990s and it was the result of companies’ need to be
more competitive and to fulfill the increasing customer demands (Cravens
and Piercy, 2003). Consumer perceived value depends on “how the customer
perceives the benefits of an offering and the sacrifice that is associated with
its purchase” (Jobber, 2004, pg.13). That’s why, Monroe (1991) and
Sweeney (1994) define customer perceived value as the ratio between
perceived benefits and perceived sacrifice. Also, Monroe and Chapman
(1987) suggest that perceived value is a weighted sum of acquisition and
transaction value.
Backgrounds of the study
After we have referred to the Introduction (Chapter 1) about the background
of this research project and determine the research problem that we are going
to analyze, we are moving to the part of the Literature Review. In this
chapter we are going to find and say about the relevant past research in
regard to our research problem, a fact that will help to the better
understanding and clarification of the topic and how we proceed in the next
chapters.