Insurance Companies and E-marketing Activities: An Empirical Analysis in the Italian Market

The relationship between insurance companies and digital technologies has been studied less than the one of the banking industry. The first step in this process was to review some relevant literature about e-marketing and e-service quality (e-SQ) in service industries—with particular focus on the insurance and banking industries. On this basis, we develop a framework for assessing e-SQ and e-marketing activities for insurance companies, both traditional and native digital, and we tested our research hypotheses in an empirical setting for the Italian market. This study identified six dimensions of e-service, drawn from items previously tested by Kaynama and Black (A proposal to assess the service quality of online travel agencies: an exploratory study. J Prof Serv Mark 21(1): 63–88, 2000), Sohn and Tadisina (Development of e-service quality measure for Internet-based financial institutions. Total Qual Manag 19(9): 903–918, 2008), Van Riel et al. (E-service quality expectations: a case study. Total Qual Manag 14(4): 437–450, 2003), and Zeithaml et al. (Service quality delivery through web sites: a critical review of extant knowledge. J Acad Mark Sci 30(4): 362–375, 2002), that explain a high proportion of the variance of e-SQ. As expected, the six factors have a positive impact on both willingness to use the website and Net Promoter Score (NPS). Ease of use becomes fundamental on first impact with the consumer, especially for an e-commerce activity, differently than in previous work in which trust and reliability were considered to be of supreme value (Parasuraman and Grewal 2000; Service quality delivery through web sites: a critical review of extant knowledge. J Acad Mark Sci 30(4): 362–375, 2002). Moreover, trust was found to positively and directly influence consumers’ decisions to promote their experience on a website. This dimension is highly correlated with the level of safety and reassurance the insurance company gives to consumers. Web aesthetics play a significant role when consumers evaluate website quality, as suggested in Zeithaml et al.’s (E-service quality: definition, dimensions and conceptual model. Marketing Science Institute, Cambridge, 2000) work but lacking in the majority of prior research. Reliability, in the Italian market, is the one factor that, contrary to similar research, was found to be less important when judging e-commerce; Wolfinbarger and Gilly (eTailQ: dimensionalizing, measuring and predicting eTail quality. J Retail 79(3): 183–198, 2003) and Zeithaml (Service excellent in electronic channels. Manag Serv Qual 12(3): 135–138, 2002) found reliability to be the most important factor in financial services, whereas in the Italian market it was proven otherwise. Following Parasuraman et al. (2005) definition that reliability means the accuracy of the promised service, we find it to be relevant even upon first encounter with a website. Content, not surprisingly, has been found to be significant and important in this analysis. Consumers are demanding and have high expectations online (Valarie and Bitner 2000); thus, it is no wonder that consumers do not tolerate low content-adequateness. The last significant dimension in our study is responsiveness. This feature deals with courtesy, communication, and problem handling by customer service. Even if for a possible new consumer this might not be a critical issue, investing in responsiveness variable might offer additional comfort about client's security and on how his data is treated. Past researchers (Measuring the service quality of internet banking: scale development and validation. Eur Bus Rev 22.1: 5–24, 2010; Measurement of service quality in Internet banking: the development of an instrument. J Mark Manag 20(1–2): 185–207, 2004; Measuring service quality in Internet banking: the case of Hong Kong. J Int Consum Mark 17(4): 99–116, 2005) maintain this variable’s importance as well. Last but not least, it was seen that customization is not to be a relevant and significant factor in the hypothesis testing. Based on the research findings, we would recommend to companies to always work on improving their service quality online and understand ex ante what consumers are looking for when they are online. Ease of use and trust must receive proper attention if consumers should be satisfied with a company standard service. However, different opportunities lie in dealing with aesthetics and content of the online proposal in order to differentiate the service from the competitors.