Relationship between Perceived Brand Equity and Purchase Intention of Life Insurance Brands in Sri Lanka: A Concept Paper

Abstract

Sri Lanka is referred as a service driven economy as it denotes in the structural dynamics noticed in the economy. Accorodgly, insurance business has also been evolving with different structural and market dynamics that influence wider impact to the economy. Moreover, a subset of insurance market, life insurance business in Sri Lanka, exhibits more competitive moves as per the marketing and consumer behavioral perspectives. Industry practices of the life insurance sector highlight many brand building initiatives aiming at stimulating favorable responses of consumers to sign competitive edges. Meanwhile, the notion of brand equity and purchase intention have been referred in many empirical studies to examine the relationship between brand related marketing stimulus and behavioral responses of consumers towards them. Alongside, this study intends to review those concepts and suggest research propositions with reference to the context of life insurance business of Sri Lanka. We followed a deductive approach, and comprehensive literature review on empirical studies was carried out as the main research tool to build arguments supporting to suggested propositions. Paper concluded by denoting directions for the future studies in line with the notions of brand equity and brand related behaviors addressing to empirical research gaps in Sri Lanka.