Incertezza e asimmetria informativa nell'industria dell'intermediazione assicurativa: uno studio sulla reputazione applicato al contesto nazionale.

The characteristics of the insurance intermediation services leads the clients unable to judge "on the basis of substance" the quality of service received. These are credence-quality goods and without viable evaluation alternatives, customers tend to rely their purchasing decision on external cues such as the status of the intermediary and its image. Objectively measurable elements are unavailable and the choice of the insurance intermediary goes through the adoption of mechanisms of imitation (social proof) or are based on other not rational assessments. The reputation is a key element in signalling the offer of high quality services and transmitting information coded by consumers as indicators of high service levels. Because of asymmetric information between intermediaries and customers, the reputation used by industry professionals will be more valuable than in other traditional goods-producing firms and becomes crucial to boost the performances of insurance intermediaries. The thesis discusses these issues taking into account the contributions who have focused on the role of reputation in permitting to fill the gap and facilitate the disappearance of the information opacity between customer and the insurance intermediary. The analysis is divided into three parts. The first part is devoted to the economy of insurance intermediaries: by making the necessary distinctions between direct and indirect channel it is considered the problem of asymmetric information, the uncertainty issue and difficulties in measuring the service-quality level. We also define the essential features of the insurance brokerage by summarizing the content of the initial investigations, taking into account the main themes of research and highlighting the relationships between the main concepts. The second part considers the link between reputation and the ethical conduct: we have examined, specifically, the conduct of insurance intermediaries. We also analyze what are the reasons that tie both the topic of complicity and that of the conflict of interest to the insurance industry. We took into account the so-called "expert power" handled by intermediaries and we draw a parallel with other professional service firms. We highlight the major points of fragility of the system and conditions that may increase its stability. The third and last part uses the contents listed above, integrating them with the information gathered through the empirical research. After discussing the topics that can give strength to the relationship between the research problem, the justification of research and the potential contribution to knowledge we test our four explicit assumptions by using parametric tests. Employing information contained in no. 341 structured questionnaires we obtained a data set finally explained and interpreted by using the factor analysis technique. This allowed us to 'condense' the vision of the sampling frame by making the latent constructs explicit. It was possible to reach the dimensions - independent of each other - that make up the construct of reputation in the eyes of the respondent pool. The discussion concludes with a summary of the final results explaining the determinations obtained by the process of hypothesis testing and identifying, at the same time, the direct implications for practical purposes.