Customer perception of service based on servqual dimensions: A study of Indian Life Insurance Companies

The research paper studies the difference between public sector LIC and four banks led listed private life insurance companies i.e. HDFC Standard Life, SBI Life, ICICI Pru Life and Max Life Insurance based on the quality dimensions as provided by Indian customers. It also compares private life insurance companies on the given parameters. The sample consist current customer of various Life Insurance companies (both public sector and 4 banks led listed private sector) named LIC, HDFC Standard Life, SBI Life, ICICI PRU Life and Max Life insurance from different parts of Mumbai and New Delhi (the capital of India). The researchers considered respondents who have relation with more than one of the Life insurance companies for the present study. This helped to understand how a customer perceives the service quality of one of the studied life insurance companies vis-a-vis another life insurance company. The results suggest that the public sector LIC is perceived to provide better service quality as compared to the private life insurance companies, In addition, even within private sector life insurance companies, customer perception on overall service quality varied to some extent. LIC showed signif icantly higher scores on three of the f ive dimensions of SERQUAL (Reliability, Tangibility and Assurance), an important research tool to measure quality. The empirical results brought forth the fact that HDFC Standard Life signif icantly differed on the perceived service quality dimensions from SBI Life. It is a pioneering work on servicequality connectingperceived servicequality and brand equityamong various leading life insurance companies.