Impact of relationship quality on loyalty : with special customer reference of Insurance Industry in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Meaning of insurance is protection from financial loss. It is a form of risk managementprimarily used to hedge against the risk of a contingent, uncertain loss.An entity whichprovides insurance is known as an insurer, insurance company, or insurance carrier. Aperson or entity who buys insurance is known as an insured or policyholder. The insurancetransaction involves the insured assuming a guaranteed and known relatively small loss inthe form of payment to the insurer in exchange for the insurer's promise to compensate theinsured in the event of a covered loss. The loss may or may not be financial, but it must be‘reducible to financial terms, and must involve somethirig in which the insured has aninsurable interest established by ownership, possession, or preexisting relationship. Theinsured receives a contract, called the insurance policy, which details the conditions andcircumstances under which the insured will be financially compensated. The amount ofmoney charged by the insurer to the insured for the coverage set forth in the insurancepolicy is called the premium. If the insured experiences a loss which is potentially coveredby the insurance policy, the insured submits a claim to the insurer for processing by a claimsadjuster. The research was conducted to examine the impact of relationship quality oncustomer loyalty in insurance industry in Sri Lanka. Most of the Consumers are unwillingor not to try get an insurance policy from insurance companies and it is important tomarketers to understand the reason for that.in this research try to test whether therelationship between customer and sales people mostly impact to get the customer loyalty.The Objective of the research is to examine the impact of relationship quality on customerloyalty in insurance industry in Sri Lanka. Currently there is an intense competition in theinsurance industry, and it has become a great challenge to organizations to build long termrelationship with their customers. Primary data of the research was collected through awell-structured questionnaire. Secondary data was collected through web sites, books,articles and journals. The questionnaire consisted with five point Likert scaling questionsand conceptual framework was developed to investigate the impact of independentvariables towards customer loyalty. A total of 250 respondents were selected as a sampleto carry out the research. Convenience sampling method which comes under nonprobability and sampling was used when collecting data and SPSS 21.0 software was usedto analyze the data. Data of the study is presented by using charts & graphs and hypothesistesting is presented using the statistical tables.