Customer Centricity & Competitive Intelligence Performance in the Insurance Industry in Western Kenya, East Africa

Globally, inability to analyze information, to see past customer life cycle disruptions and dispassionately interpret events to anticipate competition threatens performance in the insurance industry. Organizations fail to respond and offer solutions desired by their customers, instead sticking to their traditional products not highly of customer choice. It was against this gap that this paper discussed Customer Centricity and its influence on competitive intelligence in Insurance Firms in Kenya. The objectives of this study were to determine effects of Customer Centricity on Competitive Intelligence of insurance firms in Kenya; to investigate whether Customer Life Cycle practices employed by insurance firms have effects on Competitive Intelligence; to assess whether the Customer Value practices affect Competitive Intelligence of insurance firms and establish the effects of Customer Experience on Competitive Intelligence of insurance firms in Eldoret Town in Kenya, East Africa. A mixed method design was used to study 250 selected from 600 employees of insurance firms in Eldoret. A semi-structured questionnaire and an interview guide were used to collect data. Data were analyzed using selected descriptive and inferential statistics The results of applying Spearman and Friedman tests showed that customer centricity and its dimensions significantly affected competitive intelligence, with customer life as the most important, indicated by the Entropy technique. Customer experience emerged top when the Binomial test was applied. A recommendation is made that Managers in the insurance industry embrace all dimensions of customer centricity, especially the dimension of customer life cycles, in order to improve their competitive intelligence. Keywords: Customer Centricity, Competitive Intelligence, Customer Life Cycle, Customer Value, Customer Experience DOI: 10.7176/EJBM/11-10-07 Publication date: April 30th 201