China Life Insurance Company Individual Life Insurance Target Marketing Strategy

China's individual life insurance market has achieved a rapid development since the introduction of exclusive agents marketing system. The development of agents marketing system has not only resulted in outstanding performance of life insurance and a large sale force, but has also brought both innovation and challenges to the life insurance management. Since the fully opening-up of China's domestic insurance market in 2004, mixed management in finance industry has made rapid progress. More and more new business entities have intensified the market competition, thus creating a multiple-level competition structure. As China's insurance market is growing relatively mature, life insurance companies has to design their business philosophy on the basis of customer needs, in order to meet customers' rational demands.After more than 10 years of development, China's insurance industry has entered an era of fine management from its infant period, in which marketing would play a very important role. So far, however, there is no authoritative pattern of market segmentation suitable for China's individual life insurance market. Due to the fact that exclusive agent marketing started relatively late in China's life insurance industry, and that the differences in economic environment, social culture and consumption concept between China and other countries are rather huge , it's very hard to copy the foreign market segmentation pattern directly into China. The current method of market segmentation is by life circle. As those customers in the same life circle may have different consumption concepts and behaviors, market segmentation only by life circle might not be useful for life insurance companies to meet customers' demands and define their market positions.Different life insurers should choose their own target market segments in consideration of their business goals and available resources, as well as the target market segments' scale, growth potential and competition degrees. Then they should define their marketing positioning strategy in relation to their difference with other competitors, either in products, services, or in sales force and corporate brand. This...