Paper info

Critical Episodes in Corporate Insurance Relationships: The Paperpulp Case

Mikael Gidhagen

The paper was published at the 17th IMP-conference in Oslo, Norway in 2001.

The insurance market is characterised by an increasingly fierce competition, addingimportance to the customer relationship management inherently complicated by thecomplexity and high level of intangibility of insurance services. This paper proposes atheoretical view of corporate insurance relationships, where the customer-perceivedrelationship quality and satisfaction with the damage adjustment process together mould theoverall perceived service quality. This, in turn, provides the basis for the customer's decisionto stay with or leave its insurance provider after the most critical event in any insurancerelationship: the damage adjustment and claims settlement. As an example, a case ispresented, where a corporate insurance relationship and its damage adjustment process isanalysed according to the theoretical framework. A conceptualisation of the variablesaffecting the customer-perceived service quality considering the impact of the criticalepisodes in a business-to-business insurance relationship provides a key to efficientrelationship management.