Its distinctive ownership base leads to a customer‐owned mutual insurer representing a mission and purpose of existence that are very different from those of an investor‐owned insurer. While the owner value of the latter can be defined in terms of return on invested capital, in mutuals, the attention is shifted toward benefits and value for customers. Despite this major difference, scholars know little about mutual insurers' value‐creating processes. To begin filling this knowledge gap, the article explores and identifies how managers of mutual insurance companies understand and communicate the economic value of ownership to their customer–owners and other stakeholders. It reports on thematic analysis of annual reports of 18 mutuals, based in seven countries (England, Finland, Ireland, The Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United States), on the basis of which the authors offer a tentative framework for enhancing scholars' and practitioners' understanding of how the economic value of ownership is understood in a customer‐owned mutual insurance company.
Insurance industry is, and has been for a long time, characterized by a strong presence of customer-owned mutual insurance companies that account roughly one-third of the global annual premiums. As mutuals are owned by the communities they serve, one would expect them to display unique characteristics in how they create not only utilitarian but also hedonic value for their customer-owners. The aim of this study is to examine how managers communicate the hedonic value of ownership to their customer-owners. The data consist of 18 mutual insurance companies’ annual reports from seven different countries: Finland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and the USA. The resulting framework, produced by a thematic analysis, illustrates how managers of mutuals communicate the hedonic value of customer ownership. Results as well as the limitations of the study point out several interesting and new research avenues and managerial implications.
Incentive-based health insurance applications have been implemented to trigger lower insurance premiums when the individual follows healthy living habits. It has been recognised that this benefit notwithstanding, consumers’ perceptions related to such applications in the life-insurance field and health tracking are not necessarily positive. Recent research has recognised that psychological ownership, a mental state wherein one feels a technology or application to be his or her own, plays a crucial role in individuals’ willingness to adopt and use new technologies. It has been suggested that many digital applications and platforms possess unique empowering and co-creative features that offer special potential to facilitate the emergence of psychological ownership and satisfy the underlying needs. The aim of our study, proceeding from these premises, was to identify and thematize hurdles to take-up of incentive-based health insurance applications with regard to meeting needs that drive development of psychological ownership. We achieved this by conducting a thematic analysis of perceptions of consumers who were not willing to adopt a specific application of the relevant type. The resulting framework, which recognises 14 thematized hurdles in all, holds important implications for scientific and managerial use both.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.