服務業之業務員管理與品牌管理之相關性研究---以保險業為例

行政院國家科學委員會專題研究計畫 成果報告

服務業之業務員管理與品牌管理之相關性研究-以保險業為 例

計畫類別： 個別型計畫

計畫編號： NSC92-2416-H-011-002-

執行期間： 92 年 08 月 01 日至 94 年 07 月 31 日 執行單位： 國立臺灣科技大學企業管理系

計畫主持人： 吳克振

報告類型： 精簡報告

處理方式： 本計畫涉及專利或其他智慧財產權，2 年後可公開查詢

中 華 民 國 95 年 2 月 8 日

服務業之業務員 服務業之業務員 服務業之業務員

服務業之業務員管理與品牌管理之相關性研究管理與品牌管理之相關性研究管理與品牌管理之相關性研究 管理與品牌管理之相關性研究

報告摘要報告摘要報告摘要 報告摘要

本研究的原始提案主要是針對服務業業務員及品牌管理中找出較有 趣的結果，只是經過問卷發放所得到的統計結果（LISREL 的分析）

未盡理想，雖經修正，但仍未得到較佳的結果。唯在研究過程中，有 趣的發現幾個和品牌管理及消費者行為有趣的主題，因此申請延長。

在延長的時間中，陸續將上述的有趣主題給完成，分別放置於本報告 的後半部。因此，本報告的內容分為三個子報告，大致如下：

子報告一：服務業業務員管理及品牌管理之相關性研究。

子報告二：服務失敗對品牌管理及消費者行為之影響。

子報告三：消費者需求提醒對於消費者購買意願之影響－以兩個服務 業為例。

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子報告一：服務業業務員管理及品牌管理之相關性研究。

子報告一：服務業業務員管理及品牌管理之相關性研究。子報告一：服務業業務員管理及品牌管理之相關性研究。

子報告一：服務業業務員管理及品牌管理之相關性研究。

SALES AGENTS EFFECTS ON BRAND MANAGEMENT

---AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF LIFE INSURANCE INDUSTRY

Abstract

The performance of sales agents influences the company’s brand creation and brand-equity management. Sales do play a key role for creating and maintaining relationships between customers and the firm, especially in insurance industries.

Currently, firms keep enhancing the customers-sales link to increase the brand equity.

However, some researches explored that building sales loyalty may make unstable

factors and bring customers to run off. How to manage sales force effectively to

enhance brand equity and how to employ brand equity to fortify sales management

had become the imperative matters for brand management. Therefore, in this research,

it is to develop the integrated framework to search out the sales-brand relationship in

service settings. It further provides the mechanism for the company to find out the

essences for sales management. One of interesting findings for sales and brand

management is the benefit variables should be promoted. The research findings could

provide exploratory results for marketing managers’ reference.

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Introduction

Brand has emerged over past few years as an important competitive tool and critical asset (Aaker, 1991, 1996 & 2000). Due to the benefit and added value of brand equity, CEOs in many industries increasingly believe that brand equity has to be developed, managed and leveraged just like any other core asset. Brand creation and brand-equity management almost involves each corporate resource and every corporate activity. One of the important firm resources is the sales agent of the company, who plays a key role between customers and the firm, especially in insurance industries.

The extent of the firm-customer relationship depends in part on how the sales agents communicate with the customer and what is communicated. In insurance industry, service and product are delivered through sales agents to the customers.

Usually, the sales agents represent the company to directly contact the customers and answer the customers’ requirements based on the company’s standpoint. They immediately influence the quality of the relationships between the customers and the company (Johnson, Barksdale & Boles 2001). The insurance company delivers product and financial consulting through sales agents by face to face. Sales agents can develop favorable customer attitude by contact experience and further develop trust through interpersonal perceptions and proceed to influence the purchase decision of customers (Doney & Cannon 1997). As firms get more attentions in marketing investment, sales agents would perform a more prominent work in developing loyalty under this condition. Besides the original attributes of sales agents, the halo effect also makes customers feel impressive.

Currently, firms keep enhancing the customers-sales link. However, this manner

creates a dilemma for managers, either for the company brand loyalty or the sales

agent’s commitment (Reynolds & Beatty 1999; Reynolds & Arnold 2000). The

manifestation of loyalty toward sales agents makes unstable factors for business

administrators since the agents may move from one firm to another, which will bring

customers to run off (Bendapudi & Leone 2001). In service setting, prior to

formulation of the relationship among customers, agents, and companies, it is

essential to search out the customers who have positive word of mouth and may be

willing to keep purchasing in the future. Furthermore, it is imperative for the company

to find out the character of sales agents in the process of managing the company’s brand equity.

Thus, there are several marketing issues should be identified. First is what is the character the sales agents perform in the brand management. The agents’ influence is not only on the customers’ brand loyalty but also on the brand image. The managers should be clear to evaluate and control the impact of sales agents on each category (Aaker, 2000) of brand equity.

Second is what is the mutual influence between the brand image and sales agents’ associations? Sales image not only impacts the brand equity but also is influenced by brand image. Most of previous researches focused on isolated effect of sales agents or brand image (e.g., Renolds & Arnold 2000). Considering the interaction effects of sales agents and the company simultaneously will help practices understand how to create more positive customers’ commitments by employing their joint effects.

Finally, it is how the companies manage their sales agents effectively to avoid the customers’ run-off effect? Favorable and strong sales associations and sales loyalty can motivate customers’ purchasing as well as remove the customers. Developing those sales attributes or benefits that help the company fortify customer’s brand loyalty instead of building agent’s commitments is an imperative issue for brand management, especially in the insurance industry.

To accomplish the effectiveness of sales and brand management is always imperative by the marketing managers. However, previous researches did not provide the framework to answer all the aforementioned issues. Therefore, a more decent analysis than the previous researches should be developed. Previous literature related to sales management and brand management can be summarized as follows:

i. Measure the salesperson’s performances and behavioral intentions, e.g., Dixon, Spiro & Jamil (2001) and Reynolds & Beatty (1999).

ii. Examine the consequence of buyer-salesperson relationships, e.g., Doney &

Cannon (1997); Garbarino & Johnson (1999); Homburg & Rudolph

（2001）；Dixon, Spiro & Jamil (2001).

iii. Discuss the strategic management of the salesforce in developing customer

satisfaction, e.g., Geyskens, Steenkamp & Kumar (1999), Homburg &

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Rudolph (2001), and Jap (2000).

iv. Study the brand equity and leverage the salesforce as the secondary associations, e.g., Keller (1998) and Aaker (1996, 2000).

v. Review the consumers’ attributes, attitudes and loyalty, e.g., Sirdeshmukh, Singh, and Sabol (2002).

vi. Etc.

As previous research had never provided the identification to the issues posed here while incorporating all the required characteristics. The objective of this research is therefore to put forward an integrated framework which incorporates the essences of previous studies and complements them by developing a model in which to analyze the sales agents’ effects on brand management.

Conceptual framework

In order to develop the framework and formulate the research hypotheses, the following concepts concerning to brand management should be reviewed.

Brand Equity

The brand equity is based on the extent to which it can be defined as high brand loyalty, awareness, perceived quality, favorable brand associations, and other assets such as patents and channel relationships (Aaker, 1996). In case of studying brand equity, Keller (1998) emphasized consumers’ needs and wants and defined customer-based brand equity. According to Keller’s definition (1998), brand equity can be measured by two major categories: brand knowledge and brand loyalty. Brand knowledge is characterized in terms of two major components: brand awareness and set of brand associations. Along these lines, Keller further classified the brand associations into three major categories with increasing scope: attributes, benefits, and attitudes.

The first level of brand associations is the attribute association which is those

descriptive features that characterize a product or service, that can be further classified

as product-related attributes and non-product-related attributes. The next level is the

benefit association that corresponds to the personal value and meaning that consumers

attach to the product or service attributes. Benefits are further distinguished into three categories: functional, symbolic, and experiential benefits. Functional benefits are the more intrinsic advantages of product or service consumption. Symbolic benefits are the extrinsic advantages of product or service consumption that relate to underlying needs for social approval or personal expression and outer-directed self-esteem.

Experiential benefits related to what it feels like to use the product or service.

The highest level of brand associations is the attitude association that is defined in terms of consumers’ overall evaluations of a brand. Brand attitudes are important since they often form the basis for action and behavior that consumers take with the brand (Morgan & Hunt 1994; Pritchard 1997; Garbarino & Johnson 1999; Sengupta

& Fitzsimons 2000; Lim & Razzaque 1997; Chaudhuri 1999; Chaudhuri & Holbrook 2001). Consumers’ brand attitudes generally depend on specific considerations concerning to the attributes and benefits of the brand. Chaudhuri and Holbrock (2001) investigated the psychological condition of the customers, i.e., brand attitudes, and classified the brand attitude as brand trust and brand affect. Brand trust is defined as the degree of reliance of customer toward the quality of product or service provided by the brand. Brand affect is a positive emotion derived from a particular brand, that effects the extent of purchase intention and behavior and depends on the degree of delight (Barone, Miniard & Romeo 2000; Chaudhuri & Holborck 2001; Chaudhuri 2002).

Brand Loyalty

A great deal of brand equity lies on how much consumers feel loyalty to the brand. Oliver (1999) defined brand loyalty as a deeply held commitment to rebuy or repatronize a preferred product/service consistently in the future, thereby causing repetitive same-brand or some brand-set purchasing, despite situational influences and marketing efforts have the potential to cause switching behavior. This definition leads to two distinct aspects of brand loyalty—behavioral loyalty and attitudinal loyalty (Aaker 1991; Pritchard & Howard 1997；Chaudhuri & Holborck 2001; Oliver 1999).

Along this line, brand loyalty was categorized as attitude loyalty and purchase loyalty

(Sirdeshmukh, Singh & Sabol 2002). Attitude loyalty is to signify the commitment of

customers toward the brand-customer relationship. Purchase loyalty means the

repeated purchases of the brand. When customers’ brand evaluations are better than

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that of the other competitors and when the positive attitude arises, the purchase loyalty may cause the customers to increase their usual purchase frequency and quantity. Involving attitude loyalty and purchase loyalty simultaneously will help to emphasize the degree of repeated purchase intention and determine the intensity of purchase loyalty.

The Role of Sales Agents

Most sales agents are working for building and maintaining long-term relationships with their customers. In the insurance industry, companies deliver insurance for consumers through sales agents and sales agents also provide customers’

feedbacks to the company. Sales agents served as a critical link between a company and its customers (Bitner, Booms & Mohr 1994) and play a key role to influence the brand-customer relationship directly (Homburg & Rudolph 2001；Dixon, Spiro &

Jamil 2001).

As Doney and Cannon’s argument (1997), affect and trust toward sales agents influence customers’ purchase decision; also, affect and trust toward agents comes from agents’ characteristics and relation condition. Through the capability process, agents’ benefits can build a buyer’s trust by increasing confidence due to the delivery of his or her own promise. Jap (2000) argued that trust toward sales agents is founded from the inspection of the performance of the consistency, competence, honest, justice, responsibility, and cordial of sales unceasingly. In short, the benefit factors that effect sales agents’ trust can be classified into capability-objective idiosyncrasy and sentiments. Referring to their works, the agents’ benefit can be classified as social benefit and merit benefit, respectively. The former is more related to customers-sales sentiment and the latter would correspond to agents’ specialty and capability.

Referring to Reynold and Beatty’s arguments（1999）of satisfaction and loyalty to

sales, they addressed the importance of linking sales attributes such as feeling （pleased,

joyful, dejected and detest）to loyalty while studying the sales effects. Summarizing

previous literature, in this research, to study the influence of sales agents on brand

management, the sales attributes, benefits, trust, affect and loyalty are all taken into

account.

Hypotheses

Examine the Importance of the benefit variables

Keller (1998) employed the associative network memory model, which viewed memory as consisting of a network of nodes and connecting links where nodes represent stored information or concepts and links represent the strength of association between this information or concepts. His research already explained the brand image was on the basis of associative network memory model that contains attributes, benefits, and attitudes with increasing scope. According to Keller (1998), benefits are defined as the personal value that consumers attach to the product or service attributes—what consumers think the product or service can do for them and what represents more broadly. The strength of the brand nodes, benefits, helps determine the brand superiority (Martin & Stewart 2001; Faircloth, Capella & Alford 2001). However, most of the previous researches only intensified and included attributes perception, reaction attitude, and purchase intention and did not involve the affiliation of benefits. A lot of literatures explore the relationships between perception of attributes and attitude toward targets, but there is less empirical precedent to describe the effect of this core value, benefit.

Similar to Keller’s arguments (1998), when the different brand nodes appear a concert impression, the association will be made impressively and the follow-up consumer behaviors will be induced easily. As the role of benefits represents the identification of company’s efforts and customers’ original desires, the researchers posit an alternative mechanism for the attributes-attitudes relationships whereby benefits mediate the effect of attributes perception on developing attitudes. Exploring the affiliation of benefit variables should provide the significant contribution to academic and practice.

Due to previous researches ignored the intermediate impressions of benefits and the significance of benefit impact, in order to identify the substantiality of the existence of benefit variables, the following hypothesis is provided.

H1: Benefits are the significant intermediate variables while evaluating the

influence of attributes on attitudes and brand loyalty that is the existence of

intermediate variables—benefits is significant.

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Linkage of attributes, benefits, attitudes and loyalty

With the involvement of benefit associations, according to the link-and-node theory and the correspondence of attributes, benefits and attitudes with increasing scope, we derive the following hypotheses:

H2： Product-related attribute associations have high and positive effect on functional and experiential benefit associations, but non-product-related attribute associations do not.

H3: Non-product-related attribute associations have high and positive effect on the symbolic and experiential benefit associations. On the other hand, there is low correlation between the associations of functional benefits and non-product-related attributes.

H4：Brand trust (affect) is positively and significantly impacted by functional, symbolic and experiential benefit associations.

Previously, both academic and practice liked to apply satisfaction index to describe the psyche reaction for brand loyalty. Most of their antecedents of loyalty only included the evaluation of product or service attributes (Mittal, Kumar & Tsiros 1999) and some comprehensive criterions (Brady & Robertson 2001). However, to explain the antecedents of loyalty, all the psychological and action factors should be involved completely. Generally, to create a loyal customer generally should pass through the positive perceived quality and mental perception toward product attributes, as well as the favorable benefit and attitude associations. Keller (1998) further explained loyalty occurs when favorable beliefs and attitudes for the brand are manifested. Along this line, brand loyalty is regarded as a consequence of the brand knowledge a consumer has stored in long-term memory (Keller 1998). Therefore, we have

H5: Attitude (purchase) loyalty is positively and significantly impacted by brand attitudes (trust and affect).

In case of sales agents, referring to the link-and-node theory of brand knowledge and loyalty, the linkage of agents’ associations and loyalty can also be hypothesized as:

H6: The agents’ attribute associations have significant impact on agents’ social

(merit) benefit associations.

H7: The perception of social benefit and merit benefit are positively associated with sales agent trust.

H8: The perception of social benefit and merit benefit are positively associated with sales agent affect.

H9: Agent trust and agent affect are positively associated with the agent loyalty.

The Significance of Sales-Agents’ Role in Brand Equity

As discuss previously, insurance companies deliver insurance for customers through their sales agents. Most of the time, the sales agents perform the major characters to influence the brand-customer relationship directly. The perception of corporate brand is not only from its brand association, but also from the associations of its sales agents. When customers had strong associations with sales agents, the original knowledge would influence the association toward the brand unconsciously and the effect of sales agents should be omnipresent. Previous researches were to emphasize the outcome of salespeople but not to study the corresponding effect of sales’ attitude and benefit appeal in the brand management. Sales agents should have deep going effect in marketing communication, especially in service industry.

In Renold and Arnold’s research about exploring the key factors to generate repurchase (2000), loyalty toward sales’ coverage is more powerful than loyalty toward the retail stores. This finding was also verified by Johnson, Barksdale, and Boles (2001). Their work further detected and provided the strategic character of sales in customer relationship management.

Based on their proposition, we offer the following hypothesis:

H10: The ubiquitous effect of sales agent influences the steadiness of brand management. That is, the effects of sales agents provide significant contribution in brand-managing processes and do influence the brand equity consequentially.

The sales agent is a good architect in building relationships with customers to

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increase customer satisfaction and loyalty, to increase the amount of favorable word of mouth they exhibit, and to increase purchases (Reynolds & Beatty 1999). Oliver (1997) argues that interpersonal relation is more substantial than other form of relationships. The interpersonal level of relationship such as trust, attachment, and commitment, are deeply exhibited to build the foundations of brand loyalty (Nicholson, Compeau & Sethi 2001). Consequently, the strength of brand trust will reflect the degree of purchase intention (Kennedy, Ferrell & LeClair 2001). Therefore, the researchers hypothesize that the attitude to the sales agents has significant influence on brand loyalty.

H11: Agent trust and agent affect are positively and significantly associated with purchase loyalty.

H12: Agent trust and agent affect are positively and significantly associated with attitude loyalty.

In case of the correspondence of high-level associations, the agents’ benefit associations may also affect the brand attitudes. Therefore, we hypothesize:

H13: The perception of social benefit and merit benefit are positively associated with brand trust.

H14: The perception of social benefit and merit benefit are positively associated with brand affect.

There are researches shown that the conceptual distinctions between agents’

loyalty and brand loyalty are important. For example, Reynolds et al. (1999) found that a customer’s primary loyalty was to the sales associates as well as to the company.

As the forms of loyalty differ, it is necessary to study the relationship between loyalty to the agent and loyalty to the company. Due to the high attitude is an antecedent of both brand loyalty and sales loyalty (Sengupta & Fitzsimons 2000), it can be inferred that brand loyalty and agent loyalty are highly correlated. Therefore, the following hypothesis is offered:

H15: Agent loyalty is positively associated with purchase loyalty and attitude

loyalty.

Brand effects on sales agent’s associations and loyalty

There are several distinct and separate objects about whether a customer will make a satisfaction judgement of sales agents or not. Customers’ expectations toward sales agents are generally associated with the benefits that the corporate provided. In addition, consumers’ attitudes toward the agents are formulated from their overall experience with the brand and from interactions with sales agents. Therefore, brand associations do affect the attitudes and loyalty of sales agents. Therefore, the following hypotheses can be formulated:

H16: The perception of symbolic benefit, functional benefit, and experiential benefit are positively and significantly associated with sales agent affect.

H17: The perception of symbolic benefit, functional benefit, and experiential benefit are positively and significantly associated with sales agent trust.

Integrated framework of the hypotheses

Keller (1998) proposed brand knowledge by applying the link-and-node theory, and was partitioned brand associations into three levels with increasing scope.

Although Keller’s concept provided the specific brand interpretation, it needs more systematic analysis to explore the antecedents of brand loyalty, when the effects of sales agents are involved. Yoo, Donthn, and Lee (2000) constructed a model to comment joint effects of customer’ brand loyalty, perception quality, and brand associations. However, it still neglects to ascertain the consumer psychological effects

（Dowling & Uncles 1997）, such as benefits. Integrating the joint effects of product attributes, consumer desire, and psychological attitude at the meantime, an integrated branding model to illustrate the customers’ associations and loyalty processes with the involvement of sales agents effect is established which is shown in Figure 1. All the hypotheses of the framework are already presented in the previous discussions.

Relative importance of brand elements

To build a strong brand or to maintain the brand equity, it is to create or maintain

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strong brand loyalty and brand attitudes. Under this condition, it is necessary to find the elements that have stronger linkage with the higher level of associations and brand loyalty.

When a customer developed a close relationship with the sales agents, a friendship may result, which can transform a marketing encounter into a social encounter. Furthermore, it can motivate the customer to maintain the relationships with the service provider. Referring to Oliver’s (1997) research, interpersonal loyalty is more authentic than other forms of loyalty, such as loyalty to a brand or store. To the extent, it may be inferred that while establishing brand loyalty, sales agent attitude may provides more contribution than brand attitude. In addition, based on the long-term observation from many researchers and outcome of our in-depth interviews, sales agents do perform significantly to materialize the transaction between the customers and the companies in insurance industry. Along this line, it can be further inferred that comparing with brand association, agents’ association may have stronger impact on brand attitudes and brand loyalty than brand associations. Therefore, the following two hypotheses are offered:

H18: Agent attitudes are more positively associated with purchase loyalty and attitude loyalty than brand attitudes.

H19: Agent benefits are more positively associated with brand attitudes than brand benefits.

Furthermore, it is to identify the relative essence of sales agent benefits. Recently, most of successful service companies’ training programs are to emphasize on sales agents’ specialty such as asset management and finance consulting (Kotler 1999), etc.

It may be inferred that agents’ merit benefits may provide more impacts on brand attitudes than agents’ social benefits. Therefore, the researchers offer following hypothesis:

H20: The merit benefit is more important than social benefit to impact brand attitudes.

H21: The merit benefit is more important than social benefit to impact agent

attitudes.

In case of brand management, it is interesting to study the connection between attitude and loyalty. However, few researches specialize in studying the relative consequence of brand trust and brand affect on brand loyalty, especially when the sales agent’s impact is taken into account. As the brand affect provides the value-added function to excite brand loyalty than brand trust. It is therefore, to hypothesize:

H22: Under the impact of sales agents is involved, the influence of brand affect is more substantial than brand trust on purchase loyalty and attitude loyalty.

Finally, it is to study the dilemma for marketing managers, either creating the company brand loyalty or building the sales agent’s commitment (Reynolds & Beatty 1999; Reynolds & Arnold 2000). If the strong sales association are built, is it helpful for the agents’ loyalty or brand loyalty? According to previous discussion, when the strong sales associations are built, the stronger agents attitudes and loyalty follow.

Therefore, we have the following hypotheses:

H23: Agents’ benefit associations are more correlated with agents’ attitudes than brand attitudes.

H24: Agents’ attitudes are more correlated than agents’ loyalty than brand loyalty.

Questionnaire design and Pretest

The measurement of brand equity is multidimensional in nature and it requires a substantial amount of information concerning to each brand node in consumers’ mind.

That is “Attributes, Benefits, Attitudes, Loyalty, and consumer behavior”. Consider

the basic means of primary data collection, versatility, objectivity and accuracy. The

collection process is best to pass through the personal interview by employing

structured-undisguised questionnaires. In order to generate effective questions of the

questionnaire, performing in-depth interview and focus groups was required. The

questionnaire was designed and revised through the following steps. Before

employing the focus groups of the customers, several in-depth interviews with the

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marketing practices of the insurance company and veteran agents were performed to realize the basic consumer behavior and the characteristics of the industry, especially the product attributes, customer benefits and the characteristics of sales agents.

Except brand attributes and experiential benefits, measurements for all of the constructs were examined by referring previous literature. Then, two focus groups were capitalized to generate the outline and questions about the attributes, benefits, brand loyalty and consumer behaviors toward the agents and the brands. There are ten participants each time. All of them are currently insured even they are from a broad variety of insurance companies. The questions were to employ and revise the measure wording that had ever been adopted by referring the previous literature. For the purpose of not losing any information related to our topics, questions were put for discussion. The last focus group was performed to recognize each item and question of the questionnaires.

In addition, for measuring the brand attributes, brand benefits, and sales agent benefits, in an effort to enhance the face validity, the researchers employed a group of expert judge (seven academics and 15 practitioners) qualitatively to test the initial pool of items that are intended to measure various brand attributes and agent benefits and experiential benefits.

After completing the questionnaire, pretest is required. The purpose of the pretest is not only to test and refine the efficacy and reliability of each construct of the questionnaire, but also to examine the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed framework. The pretest samples were drawn from insurance companies’ customers with various age and sex (N = 368). The invalid samples were canceled when the participants missed answering some questions in the questionnaire (n = 57). There are 311 respondents in final useful samples. The respondents tend to be young (mean age

= 33), normal level of education (46% have college degree and 15.3% have graduate degree), financial of sorts, and more female (59.8%).

The first examination is the reliability check. The Cronbach’s reliability

coefficient was reckoned for each construct. The result of this step is displayed in

Table 1 and the range of numerical analysis is not all passable (.41 to .96). The second

examination is the confirmatory factor analysis. The researchers capitalize LISREL 8

to shift the measurement. Finally, the researchers measure the integrated model’s

moderation which is also displayed in Table 1. Significantly, most of numerical

analyses performed well. The final constructs’ measures were similar to the researches

presented by previous literature, e.g., Reynolds and Beatty’s（1999）, Kenedy, Ferrell, and LeClair（2001）, Garbarino and Johnson（1999）, Chaudhuri and Holbrook（2001）, Pritchard and Hoeard (1997), Machleit, Allen, and Madden (1993), and Doney and Cannon research（1997）.

Data collection

Designing Data Collection Method and Forms

The sample was randomly drawn from the customers’ database of three life insurance companies. The contact method is personal interview. After the initial section, respondents completed the measures pertaining to attitude, benefit, attribute perception, and loyalty, and finally, answered the demographic questions. As long as the missing value or fooling response exists, the questionnaire was deleted. Finally, in company A, there are 247 In addition, company B has 228 valid samples and company C has 197 valid samples.

Design Sample and Collect Data

A majority of respondents are married and own the college degree or higher. In the aggregate sample, most of respondents are women. Finally, the other three demographic norms: gender, age, and monthly income indicated no significant differences between the three life insurance companies.

Testing results

Testing the Significance of Hypothesized Structural Models

The integrated model was tested by employing the statistical package LISREL (Jöreskog & Sörbom 1993). The results for three subsamples of customers are shown in Table 2. The overall fit of the model is just fine.

Results of benefit variables and structural link of attributes, benefits, attitudes and

loyalty

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Reviewing the results in Table 2, there are only part of paths are conformed to the hypotheses. That is the hypotheses H6 and H9 are approved and the hypotheses H2, H3, H4, H5, H7and H8 are partially approved.

To further test the mediating effects of benefit variables, the researchers performed the mediation tests by regression analysis. The results are consistent with our structural model. However, with the existence of benefit variables, all the product-related attribute and non-product-related attribute effects on attitudes are attenuated substantially (or even disappear). That is in the integrated branding model the benefit variables do provide the significant mediation effect, and the hypothesis H1 were supported.

The Role of Sales agent

In testing H10, besides examining the integrated model, the researchers further modify the connection among brand benefits, brand attitudes, agent benefits, and agent attitudes to test the substantiality of sales agents’ effects. When the connections of agents’ associations with the brand associations and brand loyalty were deleted, the new model provides much insignificant prediction power that is the general index of goodness-of-fit is not significant. Therefore, H10 is supported and the influence of sales agents’ effect is substantial.

How about the influence of associations of sales agents on brand equity? Only parts of path coefficients of A

A

t
B

L

, A

A

P

L

, A

T

B

L

, A

T

P

L

, A

A

P

L

, and A

T

B

L

, are significant. That is H11 and H12 are partially approved. It is interesting to note that from the agent side, affect is closer to attitude loyalty and trust is more correlated with purchase loyalty. Certainly, both agent affect and agent trust produce the agent loyalty.

Furthermore, hypotheses H12 and H13 will explore what sparked off the

influence of agents’ benefits on the brand attitudes. Only parts of path coefficients of

S

B

t
B

T

, S

B

t
B

A

, M

B

t
B

T

, and

M

B

t
B

A

, are significant. That is H12 and H13 are only partially

approved. However, to create brand attitudes, the performance of sales agents is really

important. While studying the origins of brand attitudes, besides the experiential

benefits, brand trust and brand affect are majorly stemmed from the perception of agents’ social and merit benefits.

Influence of brand associations on sales agent’s associations

Some of path coefficients of S

B

t
A

T

, S

B

t
A

A

, F

B

t
A

T

, F

B

t
A

A

, E

B

t
A

T

, E

B

t
A

A

, S

B

t
A

A

and F

B

t
A

A

are not significant. Therefore, Hypotheses H16 and H17 are partially verified. These results provide the interesting information that is to build the agent affect with the help of brand support, only creating functional and symbolic benefit definitely is not enough. The consumption experience should also be established. Contrarily, to build agent trust, all the brand benefits provided the significant impact.

Relative importance of intermediate variables

Considering the characteristics of service industry, the researchers propose Hypotheses H18, H19, H20, H21, H22, H23, and H24 to help practice understand which variables are more favorable and more valuable for brand equity. As the relationship between brand attitudes and brand loyalty are closer than relationship of agent attitudes and brand loyalty. Hence, H18 is not supported. In case of studying the predecessor of brand attitudes, H19 is to explore the distinct impacts of agent benefits and brand benefits on brand attitudes. The results in Table 2 show that H19 is not supported. The connection of experiential benefit and agent attitude are out of the ordinary condition.

The purposes of H20 and H21 is to explore the relative importance of agents’

merit benefits and social benefits on attitude associations which would be helpful to find out the optimal sales agents management, such as the design of agents’ training program, etc. In establishing agents’ attitudes and brand attitudes, the research results show that the consequence of social benefit is not always relatively more significant.

Unfortunately, H20 and H21 are not supported.

Interestingly, the researchers find out that brand trust and brand affect have

different coverage on build loyalty. Under the influence of sales agents are involved,

20

the brand trust provides more substantial impact than brand affect on purchase loyalty and attitude loyalty. Along this line, H22 is also not supported.

Finally, it is to examine the hypotheses H23 and H24 and answer the dilemma for marketing managers. The research results show that H23 is not supported that is agent benefit associations are not more correlated with agent attitudes than brand attitudes.

However, in case of loyalty, agent attitudes have great contribution on agent loyalty but unfortunately have almost no contribution on brand loyalty, that is H24 is approved.

Substantial findings

After performing the empirical study, we would like to summarize the important substantial findings. Firstly, in building a strong brand, sales agents do play the substantial role, especially in service industry. The image and loyalty of sales agents are the important assets of the company. Sales agents’ selling involves face-to-face interaction with prospective purchasers. It is different from unidirectional communication marketing like advertising, etc. Specifically, the main advantage to personal selling is that a detailed and customized message can be sent to customers as well as feedbacks can be gathered to help close the deals. From this end, the sales agent effects are extended to all over the brand image and further influences the brand loyalty. Such a phenomenon is worth to be paid attention by the marketing researchers and practitioners.

Secondly, as long as agent trust and agent affect have been built, the agent loyalty follows automatically. However, the links from agent attitudes to brand loyalty or agent loyalty to brand loyalty is silly. In some companies, agent loyalty is not helpful for brand loyalty at all. Under this condition, the company should pay more attention for agents’ management, especially when customers are loyal to the agent but not the company.

Thirdly, it is to take care of customer’s benefit associations. Benefits represent

the identification of company’s efforts and customers’ original desires. Most of the

previous researches ignored such an important brand element, and only intensified

attributes perception, reaction attitude, and purchase intention. However, benefit is the

valuable intermediate variables attached to the product attributes and customers’

attitudes. In this research, the consequence of benefit association has been identified and the effect of this essence is emphasized. Moreover, reviewing the research results, there is another interest finding. The agents benefit associations are highly correlated with the agent attitudes as well as brand attitudes but brand benefits associations contribute to brand attitudes only. These results would help the managers solve the dilemma of sales management.

Fourthly, it is to address the essential elements for brand management that is to take care of the prominent brand elements that has closer relationship with the brand loyalty and higher level of brand associations. In this era, this research provides some substantial results: For example, for building purchase loyalty, brand trust is more significant than brand affect. For attitude loyalty, the weights of brand affect and brand trust are about the same. Thus, the brand trust and brand affect do have distinct contributions for brand loyalty. To gain the brand loyalty, marketing practitioners should pay more attention to build brand trust rather than creating brand affect.

Finally, it is the attention of another capable construct for brand management, experiential benefits. Similar to brand trust, the experiential benefit is another important basis for brand loyalty. There had many marketing activities developed to encourage trial or repeat purchase by customers. The strongest and potentially most favorable associations are resulted from the actual experience. It is therefore, one notable marketing trend is to pay attention to read the essence of aftermarketing service, such as customer-relationship management, etc.

Managerial implications

The above substantial findings would provide the following practical managerial

implications. Firstly, through sales agents, it is necessary to develop the equitable

relationships to create a sense of customer commitment and purchase loyalty. Sales

agents’ behaviors and attributes do influence customers’ attitudes toward the product

ownership and using experience and attitudes toward the brand. Therefore, the

importance of sales management should be addressed. Due to the essence of the sales

agents, the company should perform many implications for hiring and retaining good

employees. In addition, it is to design sales effective training programs that help sales

agents to be more competent and successful at using low-pressure selling tactics and

22

further improve their competence and professionalism.

Secondly, branding strategy is not only necessary to create strong associations of attributes, benefits, and attitudes, but also to take into account the co-relationship among them. Since they are link with each other, the impact of one element may influence the other. Besides, consumers are not satisfied with that only create strong brand image. Company should conduct more physical benefits experientially to gain the customers’ loyalty and create brand equity. Also, in the current environment, providing practical benefits to create brand trust are more essential than providing abstract benefits to build brand affect.

Thirdly, it is to take care of those factors that mediate the purchase loyalty and attitude loyalty. Our results had already examined how each of the proposed antecedents offers an opportunity for managers to guide development and implementation of a loyalty program with the general goal of increasing marketing efficiency and effectiveness. One prominent factor is the benefit association in brand knowledge, which is quite consequential in understanding brand trust and brand affect.

The marketing practitioners should always pay attention to build benefit associations, instead of taking care of attributes and attitudes, only.

Fourthly, to avoid the customers’ run-off effects, the benefit associations should be promoted. Marketing managers can evaluate the research results about benefit associations to allocate expenditures on design, communication, and merchandising strategies. The managers can put more effort to build brand benefits as well as sales specialty. According to our research results, it is quite helpful for building positive brand attitudes and further creating brand loyalty.

Finally, differentiation strategy is very crucial. When the insured period is over,

many insured are having active positions to get on and off freely and tend to compare

price and substantial attributes rather concern abstract attributes or benefits. Under

this circumstance, if the insurance company fails to maintain differentiation,

consumers will lose their basis for selection, and value equation will become

dominated by “pricing component” rather than “benefit delivery”. Furthermore,

competitors would be easier to enter a better proposition. This research already

provided direction for marketers who want to formulate optimal differentiation

strategies, especially with the involvement of sales agents’ effects.

Research Limitations and Future Research directions

While this study helping practice and academic to better understand the customer retained process and agent’s effects, the limitation still exists. The major limitation is we are not able to obtain strong statistical results enough. Besides, purchase intention and contact interest were measured and mingled together to represent the purchase loyalty that did not mirror the actual behavior completely in the future. Future researches can surmount this restriction through panel data to affirm the consistency between today’s attitude and prospective behavior.

In summary, our study provides a new opinion for examining the process of

brand communication and agent effect model. The role of benefit will subvert the

perceived performance of individual attribute and assist brand marketing to scale the

new hightlights. Furthermore, our finding formulates the relationship among brand

associations and offers a useful blueprint for brand consulting. Marketer can make

more appropriate decision to heave customer loyalty directly and quite possibly it will

raise profits in the near future.

24

F igu re 1 : T h e I n te gr a te d B ran d in g M od el

X6 X4

X19 X5

X1 X2 X3

X15 X14 X12

X7 X8 X9

X13 X11 X10

X16

X17

X18 X20

Y1 Y2 Y5 Y3

Y6 Y4

Y7

Y9 Y8

Y14 Y15

Y10

Y13 Y12 Y11

Y16 Y17

Y18 Y19 Y20

Y21 Y22 Y23

Y24

Y27 Y26 Y25

Y28 Y29 Y30

Y32 Y33

Y34 Y31

X21

Agent Loyalty ηηηη10101010

Brand Loyalty ηηηη11111111 Agent

Affect ηηηη6666

Agent Trust ηηηη7777

Brand Trust ηηηη8888

Brand Affect ηηηη9999 Social

Benefit ηηηη1111

Merit Benefit ηηηη2222

Symbolic Benefit ηηηη3333

Functional Benefit ηηηη4444

Experiential Benefit ηηηη5555 Agent

Attributes ζζζζ1111

NPR

Attributes ζζζζ2222

PR Attributes ζζζζ3

TABLE 1

Reliability Measurement

Construct alpha

Agent Social Benefits 0.86

Agent Merit benefits 0.80

Symbolic Benefits 0.91

Functional Benefits 0.66

Agent Affect 0.48

Agent Trust 0.95

Brand Trust 0.92

Brand Affect 0.75

Agent loyalty 0.41

Brand Loyalty 0.80

Purchase Loyalty

Agent attributes 0.87

Non-product-related attributes 0.85

Product-related attributes 0.89

Experiential Benefits 0.82

26

TABLE 2

Standardized Path Coefficient

Estimates

Construct links A

(n=247)

B (n=228)

C (n=197)

P

A

S

B

.34

-.87

.13

N

P

A

S

B

.51

1.82

.79

P

A

F

B

.36

-1.15

.41

N

P

A

F

B

.56

2.08

.57

P

A

E

B

.50

3.70

.78

N

P

A

E

B

.07

-2.78

.0.00

S

B

B

T

.24

1.02

.21

F

B

B

T

.43

-.66 .21

E

B

B

T

.23

.24

.41

S

B

B

T

.22

-.61 .26

M

B

B

T

-.01 .32 -0.45

S

B

B

A

.29

4.52

.55

F

B

B

A

.39

-3.79

-.21

E

B

B

A

.21

-.12

.35

S

B

B

A

.21

-.07

.42

M

B

B

A

-.04 .44

-.17

B

T

B

L

.37

-.80 -.57

B

T

P

L

B

A

B

L

.39

1.67

.13

B

A

P

L

A

L

P

L

A

A

S

B

.80

.99

.83

A

A

M

B

.86

.59

.92

A

A

A

A

-.08 5.22 -.56

S

B

A

A

.57

-3.79 .56

M

B

A

A

.24

-.31

.95

S

B

A

A

.02 .46

-.11

F

B

A

A

.15

-.82 .00

E

B

A

A

.08

-.12

.27

A

A

A

T

.35

.36 -.42

S

B

A

T

.23

-.04 .35

M

B

A

T

.19

.49

.98

S

B

A

T

-.03 2.88

-.35

F

B

A

T

.10

-2.69

.12

E

B

A

T

.02 -.33

.32

A

A

A

L

.58

.11

2.70

A

T

A

L

.20

.93

-1.93

A

A

B

L

.07

.07 1.62

A

T

B

L

.03

-.18 -1.39

A

A

P

L

A

T

P

L

A

L

P

L

A

T

B

T

-.05 .64

.47

*p<.10

**p<.05

***p<.01

28

TABLE 3

Tests of Mediation for Benefits Dependent Variable

Brand Trust

Dependent Variable Brand Affect

b T Note b T Note

Model 1

Product-related attribute .427 7.445 .413 6.706 Non-product-related attribute .388 6.781 .345 5.609

R

=.535 R

=.464

Model 2

Symbolic benefit .128 2.133 .365 6.066

Product-related attribute .393 6.674 Partial .318 5.359 Partial Non-product-related attribute ..329 5.182 Partial .174 2.732 Partial

R

=.544 R

=.539

Model 3

Functional benefit .353 5.763 .320 4.774

Product-related attribute .301 5.203 Partial .299 4.707 Partial Non-product-related attribute .231 3.849 Partial .203 3.071 Partial

R

=.595 R

=.513

Model 4

Experiential benefit .412 8.055 .303 5.135

Product-related attribute .188 3.211 Partial .237 3.512 Partial Non-product-related attribute .359 7.086 Partial .324 5.534 Partial

R

=.639 R

=.520

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