The importance of client relationships and service brand personification dimensions in a short term business insurance market

Abstract

Some of the most valuable brands are business-to-business (B2B) service brands, for example, IBM, Cisco and SAP (Glynn 2012; Kalafatis, Remizova, Riley & Singh 2012). The Brand Resonance model was developed to guide brand building within a consumer product or individual brand context, though the model is proposed to be applicable to any context, including business-to-business (B2B) and service contexts. There is doubt regarding the validity of the claim that the Brand Resonance model is applicable, as is, to the B2B sector. Using an interpretivist qualitative approach and an exploratory research strategy, an amended framework was developed empirically by applying the Brand Resonance model to a B2B services context. Results prompted the inclusion of a people dimension and elevated the importance of relationships in an amended framework, called the ServBrand framework. The framework proposes that people are at the centre of service brand building and sees Relationships as the ultimate aim of the framework. The findings support core principals of the interaction approach, which is a major school of thought within B2B marketing research. (Turnbull, Ford & Cunningham, 1996).