Buyer seller relationships in the UK insurance market: Does performance match market share?

The purpose of this paper is to measure the performance of firms in the group permanent health insurance sector and to compare this to market share rankings. As most sales in this sector occur through intermediaries the key performance indicators should be the perceptions of buyers among this group. The research conducted uses the Industrial Marketing and Purchasing group (IMP, 1984) model to measure the performance of firms through the perceptions of independent financial advisers (IFAs) against the key relationship marketing factors. The research was conducted by an agency and includes telephone interviews with 100 buyers. The results show that there are significant differences between the ratings for the variables in the IMP model of relationship marketing. The results also show significant relationships between performance and market share for some of the relationship marketing variables. This research provides support for the use of the IMP model in this sector but also leads to a number of questions that need further research.