Citation
(2014), "Executive summary of “Brand knowledge transfer via sponsorship in the financial services industry”", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 28 No. 6. https://doi.org/10.1108/JSM-07-2014-0256
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Executive summary of “Brand knowledge transfer via sponsorship in the financial services industry”
Article Type: Executive summary and implications for managers and executives From: Journal of Services Marketing, Volume 28, Issue 6
This summary has been provided to allow managers and executives a rapid appreciation of the content of the article. Those with a particular interest in the topic covered may then read the article in toto to take advantage of the more comprehensive description of the research undertaken and its results to get the full benefit of the material present.
If you buy car or home insurance, you might not know how good or bad the insurance company is until someone crashes into your car or it is stolen, or your house is damaged by fire or visited by burglars. That’s the essence of such services. You can rarely assess their quality before or even after purchase, although they can be differentiated to an extent by their price, the thoroughness – and ease-of-understanding – of the advice they offer and the relative simplicity of their application forms as compared with those of their competitors.
However, there’s another way for financial services companies, such as those offering insurance, to make themselves desirable or preferable to potential customers – sponsorship – or, to be more exact, the boost to branding which a partnership with another organization can provide. In other words, the leveraging of a brand identity to another organization.
Sponsorship is one of the common brand marketing strategies designed to establish, cultivate or change brand equity and refers (as defined by previous research) to “the provision of assistance either financial or in-kind to an activity by a commercial organization for the purpose of achieving commercial objectives”. Sponsorship entails two activities: an exchange between the two firms (a sponsor and a sponsee) which develops the sponsored activity and the marketing of the sponsored activity mainly exploited by the sponsor.
In “Brand knowledge transfer via sponsorship in the financial services industry” Dr. Sujin Yang and Dr. Sejin Ha propose that sponsorship can develop brand knowledge transfer when there is a good fit between the sponsoring firm and the sponsored event. Although evidence supports the fact that sponsorship leads to various benefits, less understood is how, from a consumer’s perspective, sponsorship and pre-existing beliefs about a firm’s entity (sales agents) come into play in shaping brand image transfer. Sponsorship in an insurance industry has been relatively little explored. This study explores brand knowledge transfer through sponsorship events within the insurance industry context in South Korea. It should be pointed out at the outset, however, that in that country, there are negative perceptions of insurance agents among consumers.
Unlike in the USA, becoming an insurance agent is relatively easy in South Korea. An individual can easily get an insurance license by simply participating in some training offered by an insurance firm to work as an insurance agent and get paid a commission for the sales he or she generates. No post-secondary education is required. In response to the ease of obtaining work as a sales agent, not surprisingly, homemakers who are available to work part-time have been the traditional sales channel, and personal networks and face-to-face interactions have been the long-established sales approaches in the insurance industry. However, such a sales channel system has created problems such as sales agents showing a lack of professionalism, misselling, not achieving customer retention and promoting unfavorable perceptions regarding sales agents and insurance firms. Thus, insurance firms have come to see the need for strategies (e.g. sponsorship) to sustain and further expand their market.
Another challenge for such companies in South Korea is that the industry is at a mature stage with 80 per cent of the population having at least one policy. As a result, identifying a new market is a constant and challenging task. The study sets out to prove the effectiveness of sponsorship for insurance service marketers, striving to increase market share in a mature market by exploring:
how pre-event brand knowledge and perceived sponsor–event fit contribute to post-event brand knowledge; and
if and how consumers’ attitudes toward insurance agents play a role as a moderator in the model.
Brand knowledge is examined in terms of brand awareness and corporate image.
Event sponsorship is found to be an effective tool to improve brand awareness and corporate image of insurance firms. Brand image transfer works well when a sponsored event delivers fit to the sponsor. This means that firms have to aim to design and execute an event in ways that will promote their own favorable image. The study also shows that negative attitudes toward insurance agents enhanced the pre- and post-event corporate image links.
Three implications from the results have been identified. First, of obvious importance in cultivating brand equity is corporate image, and this is the case especially in a business environment where consumers’ perceptions of sales agents are less favorable. Next, favorable attitudes toward sales agents did contribute to the transfer of corporate image in the context of an event–sponsor fit. Thus, it is crucial for marketers to develop new and favorable perceptions among consumers regarding insurance agents while managing sponsorship programs in line with the focal insurer. Finally, insurance firms need to improve the sales channel system by adopting higher professional and educational standards for sales agents and financial advisors.
To read the full article enter 10.1108/JSM-01-2014-0845 into your search engine.
(A preícis of the article “Brand knowledge transfer via sponsorship in the financial services industry”. Supplied by Marketing Consultants for Emerald.)