Life Insurance Buying Decisions: Word-of-Mouth Effects on Thai People
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Abstract
Word of mouth can prompt a consumer to consider a brand or product in a way that incremental advertising spending cannot. The life insurance market in Thailand is one of the toughest to penetrate. The aims of this study were to determine whether word of mouth affected life insurance policy buying decisions among Thais, and whether satisfaction or trust exerted an additional influence on word of mouth regarding life insurance. An online questionnaire was used together with convenience and quota sampling to collect data from 200 men and 200 women who had experience buying life insurance. Descriptive analysis was utilized with the demographic information. The effect of word of mouth on the decision to buy life insurance was assessed by simple linear regression. Multiple linear regression was used to determine the effect of satisfaction and trust on the effectiveness of word-of-mouth recommendations. Word of mouth had a significant effect (p ≤ .1%) on the decision of Thais to buy life insurance. Moreover, satisfaction and trust had significant effects (p ≤ .1%) on acceptance of word-of-mouth recommendations. Surprisingly, satisfaction had a greater effect on uptake of word-of-mouth recommendations than did trust.
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