The decision-making process for a customer to buy a product involves five general links,including problem recognition,information collection,alternative programs evaluation,purchase decision and post-service feedback.As a special commodity genre,commercial insurance and its purchasing process is of no exception.Therefore,this paper will study the family’s decision-making process of the commercial insurance purchase by integrating the five general links with the Social Capital Theory.The influence of social capital on the purchase decision of commercial insurance is not simply reflected as "whether to buy or not" or "how much to buy" but plays an important role in each link of the purchase decision process,resulting the purchase decision presented above.Based upon this,the main research question is put forward,how and to what extend does social capital affect household decision of purchasing the commercial insurance.This paper consists of six chapters and it is arranged in accordance with the logical framework from proposing problems to solving problems.The first chapter is introduction.The core concept--social capital is led in with a revisit of the development and current state of the commercial insurance market of China.Then research objectives,significance,methods as well as the point of innovation will follow.The second chapter is the literature reviews of what have been done in terms of three aspects: the social capital,purchasing decision of commercial insurance as well as their interrelation.Moreover,achievements that I learned from researchers at home and broad have made up my mind to study the effect of social capital on the purchase decision of commercial insurance from three perspectives of trust,norm and social network.The third chapter introduces Theory of Social Capital and the buyer decision process.Social Capital Theory will serve as a theoretical framework in which the purchase decision process of commercial insurance will be studied.The fourth chapter describes the mechanism analysis.Based upon Putnam’s Social Capital Theory,the three dimensions of social capital are applied into each specific link of the buyer decision process and the function mechanism of trust,norm and social network on the purchase decision of commercial insurance is analyzed respectively.The fifth chapter describes the empirical results.Author,at first,selects the CHFS database of SWUFE and defined the variables.Then,Author constructs the Probit Model and Tobit Model in order to test the proposed hypotheses and interprets the empirical results in detail.The sixth chapter gives the research conclusion.Based on the theoretical analysis and the main research conclusions,a series of effective and specific suggestions are put forward.The main conclusions of this research are as below:(1)Three dimensions of social capital,trust,norm and social network,indeed play a significant role in each link of purchase decision process of commercial insurance.They ultimately promote the family to buy commercial insurance.(2)Main effect of age structure difference was found in varying the influence of social capital on purchase decisions of commercial insurance,which generally presents an inverted "U",but there is no strict positive correlation between the degree of influence and age structure.The main contributions of this paper are summarized as follows:(1)Research conclusions are more convincing,because they are drawn from empirical data from two surveys and the sample size was large and comprehensive.(2)The measurement of social capital is more comprehensive and the mechanism of social capital was analyzed respectively in each link,which enriches the existing research on social capital and purchase decisions of commercial insurance.(3)Besides,the age heterogeneity was investigated and its effect was found,which provide more empirical evidence for the social capital discipline and a strong theoretical support for insurance companies to provide targeted products and services. |