An organizational prospective study on sense-making taking social actors’ attitudes and contextual factors into account
The Context
The Belgian insurance market still need to upgrade their digital competencies and touchpoints, while Belgian customers seem reluctant to contract insurances online.
In this general low digital maturity context, AG Insurance is a leading insurer, as about fifty percent of the Belgian population are insured by an AG Insurance product, contracted through independent brokers or banks, or through their employer. Furthermore, their client base is situated in the older segment of the population, thus rendering digital solutions potentially more challenging to implement.
The Challenge
As a result, AG Insurance faces several marketing challenges. Firstly, despite an excellent market penetration, AG Insurance suffers an awareness deficit, sustained by the indirect distribution approach. Second, AG Insurance needs to understand how to best digitalize its overall customer experience, in a profitable way, in a context of an indirect distribution strategy.
Key Question & Goals
Based on the aforementioned elements, the key question here can be formulated as follows:
“How can digitalization of the customer experience support a marketing strategy aiming to both increase brand awareness and online subscriptions, in a context of an indirect distribution?”
This can be broken down into several research questions:
How can the digitalization of the customer experience support a stronger brand awareness and online conversion rate?
Which factors can influence Belgian consumers to subscribe online?
Are there Belgian idiosyncrasies that need to be accounted for?
The main goals of the research project, from a managerial contribution standpoint, will be to:
Determine which stages of the consumer journey should be digitalized and how;
Determine which digital tools and channels to use, based on consumer preferences;
Understand how to best communicate the brand positioning online and to segment and target Belgian customers based on their online behaviour.
From a theoretical perspective, the main goals will be to:
Determine the motivations and barriers to purchase online for high involvement purchases;
Understand how digital tools can contribute to increased brand awareness and online conversions in the context of an indirect distribution strategy.
About AG Insurance
With 190 years of expertise in serving customers and over 4,000 collaborators, AG Insurance is a global Belgian insurer with a market share of 28 % in life insurance and 16% in non-life. 2,7 million Belgian put their trust and confidence with AG Insurance, meaning that nearly 50% of all households in Belgium are its customers. AG Insurance offers a comprehensive range of products and services to suit all needs through an integrated distribution model covering bancassurance, brokers and B2B.
