Context
This answer is based on KEK Insurance Brokers Ltd (KEK), my employer, a Ghanaian insurance broking company which has been the No. 1 insurance broker since 1992. It has affiliations with several local and international insurance organisations and provides services of general, life and non-life insurance products to both business and personal line customers. The company was registered as a limited liability company in 1985, and obtained the license to operate as an insurance broking and consultancy firm in 1990. Over the past 26 years, it has managed insurance placements of a wide array of local and multinational firms. (KEK Insurance Brokers, 2015)
Over the next five years, it has strategic objectives of expanding to further regions…show more content… Market Research
Market research enables KEK to investigate customer behaviour and needs in order to identify potential opportunities and develop products and services that are properly tailored to these customers and consequently drive up profitability of the company. This can be achieved through techniques such as:
a) Secondary research or desktop research is a great starting point, involving the review of data collected from previous research e.g. industry journals.
b) Primary research - involves collecting first hand information directly from customers and potential customers. This can be either qualitative or quantitative.
• Qualitative research attempts to understand non-tangible elements such as emotions, attitudes and opinions through the use of techniques such as observational and ethnographic research (Kotler& Armstrong, 2012, p.107), in depth interviews, experiments and group discussions.
• Quantitative research attempts quantify responses, and measures anything that involves proportions. The method includes face-to-face or phone interviews, postal questionnaires and online…show more content… Art Weinstein, 1999).
In so doing, like minded customer groups are put together and the expectation is that their buying patterns and response to tailored products and campaigns will be similar. Segmentation typically follows these key steps:
• Identify the market
• Group customers based on customer characteristics or segmentation bases such as age, gender, geographical area, income and buying behavior.
• Quality check identified segments to ensure that a real opportunity exists
• Match KEK services to the needs of the various segments using entire marketing mix
• Evaluate segments over time and revise as needed.
Through segmentation, KEK has identified two main types of customers:
a) Business Customers
Business customers are commercial or professional organisations such as corporate bodies, small and medium enterprises, NGOs. Business customers were segmented and identified using the ‘macro-micro’ approach – in this type of segmentation, current customer groups within the organization are first identified and then the groupings are further refined based on additional knowledge / information about them – e.g. buying patterns and emerging industries.(Baker and Saren,