An Empirical Study Of Market Orientation In The Life Insurance Industry In South Africa

Abstract

This paper examines the implementation of market orientation in the South African life insurance firms. A non probability sampling method was employed to select 102 respondents from life insurance organisations. Factor analysis method was used to analyse the data. Results of this study indicate that assessing market orientation practices using customer focus, competitor focus and inter-functional coordination variables is applicable to the South African life insurance industry. The findings suggest that the market orientation scale appears to capture well the construct of market orientation in the South African cultural context and confirms that market orientation is a worthwhile management goal to adopt. The findings are consistent with the literature. The results suggest that the use of sales people in measuring market orientation should be generalised with caution as this factor scored the lowest in the factor loading for customer focus. The Narver & Slatter (1990) scale was found to be reliable in measuring market orientation in the South African life insurance industry.