The Identity Oriented Brand Leadership Concept in the Insurance Business: Results of an Exploratory Empirical Study

Focus of this article will be the question to which extent the concept of the identity oriented brand leadership is established in the insurance business and how it should be implemented in ideal case. First of all, it is the objective is develop a theoretical benchmark for the identity oriented brand leadership for services and insurances in particular, secondly compare it with practice in insurance companies. First there will be a short theoretical representation of the insurance market and the concept of the identity oriented brand leadership. In this regard especially the effects are obvious, the constitutive distinctive marks of services have on brand leadership. Due to the characteristics of services, the internal identity oriented brand leadership plays a major role in this article. According to that concept the employees’ brand knowledge and brand commitment result in brand citizenship behavior. In turn there are other variables that have an effect on these determinants like: consistence and continuity, positive differentiation and operationalization of the brand as well as brand-corresponding human ressource acitivies, internal brand communication and brand-corresponding leadership. By expert interviews the status quo of the identity oriented brand leadership in practice becomes apparent and is compared with theory. It is obvious, that the identity oriented brand leadership basically exists in the insurance business but is not entirely comparable to theory. These gaps between practice and theory as well as some conspicuous characteristics of insurances lead to the given recommendations: Definition of a strong, individual brand identity, an integral management of the identity oriented brand leadership in insurance companies and a stronger integration of the employees and especially of the sales department. According to that, insurance companies shall develop a special concept for their exclusive agents.