ASSESSMENT OF THE PROMOTIONAL

PRACTICE OF AFRICA INSURANCE COMPANY

IN HAWASSA BRANCH

HAWASSA UNIVERSITY

COLLEGE OF BUSINESS AND ECONOMICS

DEPARTMENT OF MARKETING MANAGEMENT

A Research Proposal Submitted To Department Of Markating Managment Of Hawassa University

In Partial Fulfillment Of The Requirement For Bacheior Of Art (B.A) Degree In Markating
Managmen

By:Melkam Kidane

ID No:0098/10

Advisor:Woldesilassie H

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 December, 2019

Hawassa, Ethiopia

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 ABSTRACT
Promotion is one of the most important marketing mix element that used to disseminating
information about the product or service provided by the business firm to the target group that
have been able to generate a reasonable percentage contribution for the profit of the business.
This study is entitled as the analysis of promotional practice in case of Africa insurance
company. The objective of the study will be to analyze the promotional practice of Africa
Insurance Company. The study will use both primary and secondary data sources to collecte the
data for the present study .The primary data will be collected through questionnaires and
interview from the customer and marketing manager of the company, and secondary data will be
collected from different manuals of the company (magazines, reports, websites etc.).The
collected data will be analyzed by using tables, percentage method and frequency distribution.

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 Table of Contents
ABSTRACT.....................................................................................................................................i
CHAPTER ONE..............................................................................................................................1
1. INTRODUCTION....................................................................................................................1
1.1. Background of the Study...................................................................................................1
1.2. Statement of the problem..................................................................................................2
1.3. Research Questions...........................................................................................................3
1.4. Objective of the study.......................................................................................................3
1.4.1. General objective.......................................................................................................3
1.4.2. Specific objectives.....................................................................................................3
1.5. Scope the study.................................................................................................................3
1.6. Significance of the study...................................................................................................4
1.7. Limitation of the Study.....................................................................................................4
CHAPTER TWO.............................................................................................................................5
2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE...............................................................................5
2.1. The Essence of promotion.................................................................................................5
2.2. Promotional mix elements................................................................................................5
2.2.3. Sales Promotion.........................................................................................................6
2.2.4. Public relations..........................................................................................................7
2.2.5. Personal Selling.........................................................................................................7
2.3. Promotion communication process...................................................................................7
2.4. Managing promotion strategy...........................................................................................8
2.5. Budgeting for promotional strategy..................................................................................8
2.6. Insurance...........................................................................................................................8
2.6.2. Benefit and cost of insurance........................................................................................9
CHAPTER THREE.......................................................................................................................10
3. Research Methodology...........................................................................................................10
3.1. Research Design..............................................................................................................10
3.3. Source of Data.................................................................................................................10
3.4. Data Collection Instruments............................................................................................10
3.5. Population of the study...................................................................................................10
3.6. Sampling Technique.......................................................................................................11
3.7. Sample Size.....................................................................................................................11
3.8. Data analysis Techniques................................................................................................11
3.9. Work and financial plan......................................................................................................12
3.9.1. Work Plan for the Research.........................................................................................12
3.9.2. Financial plan of the study..........................................................................................12
References......................................................................................................................................13

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 CHAPTER ONE

1. INTRODUCTION
1.1. Background of the Study

Many businesses contribute to make their objective and goals successful. These factors include
good marketing information system, dedicated employees, excellent implementation and
effective marketing system from identified factors marketing system is basically deals with
customers. Especially today’s modern business gives great emphasis to customers because
customers are regarded as pillar of any business organization. marketing also speed up the
exchange process by carefully examining the needs and wants to customer .producing products
and service that satisfy these need offering at a certain price ,making it available through
different challenges of distribution and developing a program of integrated marketing
communication. To create awareness and interest, promotion is one integral part of the marketing
mix is very important tool (Perreault, 2000). Promotion is communication of information
between seller and potential customer/buyer .it means activities that communicate the merit of
the product and persuade target customers to buy it .companies must announce to customers
about the product benefit and carefully position products in customers mind to do this they must
skillfully use mass promotion tools (Kotler, 1996)

Promotion has an important effect on a countries economy; society culture and political
system .most economist believe that promotion has motive impact on the economy because it
stimulates demand for product and service.The marketing manager‘s main promotion job is to
tell target customers that the right product/service is available at the right time at the right place
and the right price (Perreault, 2002). The promotion function of any service giving company
involves the transmission of message to customers. If the service is new the promotional effort
will probably really heavier an advertising sales promotion ,personal sale and publicity relation
in order to make potential users aware of the service or product information these buyers or
users .

About the benefit associated with the product users to use the service promotional activities had
not only to the new product or service to the customers but also important to remained any use

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for already existing product which its demand is decrease. Advertising means any paid form of
non-personal presentation and promotion ideas, goods or services by identified sponsors.Sales
promotion which includes trade fair, bazar, exhibition and so on. Personal selling one –to-one
contact with customers when the product is to technical and direct marketing with carefully
targeted individual consumers to obtain an immediate response (Kotler, 2004). Developing
promotional strategy is an essential part of marketing organization business. In this research
paper attempt to will be made to investigate the real contribution of promotion for the business
success by giving particular emphasis on Africa Insurance Company. The researcher will try to
analyze and investigate the promotion practice of Africa Insurance Company.

1.2. Statement of the problem

Insurance can be defined from two points of view, from individual point of view and from the
social point of view; From an individual point of view, insurance is an economic device where
by individuals substitute a small certain cost (the premium) for a large uncertain financial loss
(the contingency insured against) that would exist if it were not for the insurance. Insurance is
the protection against financial loss provided by an insurer (Tekelgiorgis, 2004). Promotion is
one of the most important tool in disseminating information about the product or service
provided by the business firm to the target group, and as we know it can be determine the
success and failure of one’s organization .many business firms do not give more emphasis to the
importance of the promotion in achieving their business goal and objective. Especially an
insurance company’s promotion is the crucial tool in order to create awareness about the service
provision of the company.

The general public is not well aware of the service provided by the company and the media used
by the company is not compatible for the company target customers. The purpose of this study
will be to point out weakness pertinent to Africa insurance share company promotional activity
and suggest corrective measures. The study will focus on the assessment of promotional activity
of Africa Insurance Company.

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1.3. Research Questions

This study is designed to answer the following questions:

- Which promotion mix element more applicable for Africa Insurance share company?
- What are the ongoing promotional strategies of the Africa Insurance company?
- What are the factors that affect the organization promotional activity?
- Which kinds of media are used by company in order to convey message to customers
about its services?
1.4. Objective of the study
1.4.1. General objective

The general objective of the study is to analyze the promotional practice of insurance industry in
the case of Africa Insurance Company Hawassa branch.

1.4.2. Specific objectives

Specifically, the study will try:

 To identify the promotional mix element more applicable for Africa Insurance company.
 To identify the ongoing promotional strategy of Africa Insurance company.
 To identify the factors that affects the organization promotional activity.
 To assess the media used by the company in order to convey message to customers about
its services.
1.5. Scope the study

The study will be delimited on analysis of promotional practice, including advertizing, personal
selling, sales promotion and public relation in case of Africa Insurance Company. With
regarding to the area of the study, this study will be only consider Africa Insurance Company at
Hawassa branch, thus it does not reflect other Insurance Companies. It only covers the
promotional practice of the company. Therefore, it does not go beyond promotional practice of
insurance industry. In relation to the research design, it will use a descriptive research design.

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 1.6. Significance of the study

The present study will be significant because it enables one to know the promotional practice of
Africa Insurance Company. This study will be important because it provide current practice of
the African Insurance company in relation to promotional activities and give information to the
company leaders and help to take corrective action in relation to their promotional practice.
Moreover, it will help as starting point for further research on the same area and it will help for
the researcher to improve research skill.

1.7. Limitation of the Study

This study will be limited only Africa Insurance Company Hawassa branch, thus it does not
reflect other Insurance Companies. It only covers the promotional practice of insurance
company. Therefore it does not go beyond promotional practice of insurance industry. As it is
descriptive study, the relationship of different models and constructs will not be included. There
will be limitation in terms of time and finance.

CHAPTER TWO

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 2. REVIEW OF RELATED LITERATURE

2.1. The Essence of promotion

It is clear that promotion practice in a given company determine the success of the company as
well as the other marketing mix elements do, business now a day needs to determine the
appropriate marketing strategies to implement especially in a competitive environment , this
research study select the one element of the marketing mix element(promotion) to analyze its
effect on insurance industry. A detail definition and apparentness of implementing this strategy
discussed below.

Promotion means activities that communicate the merits of the product and persuade target
customers to buy it .companies must inform consumers about product benefits and carefully
position product in the customers mind .to do so this they must skillfully use the mass promotion
tools. Every company inventively cost in to the role of communication of promoter (kotler,
1999).

2.2. Promotional mix elements

2.2.1. Advertising

Advertising-is defined as any paid form of non–personal communication about an organization,

product ,service or idea by an identified sponsors .The paid aspect of this definition reflects the
fact that the apace or time for an advertising message generally must be bought .The non-
personal component means that advertising involves mass media (e.g. TV, radio ,magazines
,newspapers )that can transmit message to large group of individual ,often at the same time
(Belchand, 2009). It involves either mass communication via newspapers, magazines, radio,
television, and other media such as bill boards or direct communication that is pin pointed to
each business to business customer or ultimate consumer. In advertising there is no immediate
feedback and cannot control the communication flow.

Developing Advertising Strategy

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Advertising strategy consists of two major elements: creating advertising messages and selecting
advertising media. Good advertising message are important into day’s costly advertising message
and cultured advertising environment. Advertising strategy is what the advertiser says about the
brand being advertised.

 To develop a message strategy, advertisers go through three steps:

 Message generation and evaluation
 Creative development and execution
 Social responsibility review (Kottler and Armstrong, 2004)
2.2.2. Direct Marketing

Direct marketing-direct communication with carefully targeted individual consumers to obtain an

immediate response. Direct marketing communicate directly with customer, often one-to-one
interactive basis. Direct communication other than personal selling, contact between buyer and
seller (kotler, 2004). Direct marketing is direct communications with carefully targeted
individual consumers to obtain an immediate response (Kottler, 1999). Today, most direct
marketers see direct marketing as playing an even broader role than simply selling products and
services.

2.2.3. Sales Promotion

Sales promotion which is defined as those the marketing activities that provide extra value or
incentives for purchasing a product and that can stimulate immediate sales from consumers or
dealers. A variety of sales promotion tools are used to influence consumers,including:coupons,
rebates, contests, sweepstakes, premiums, and point of purchase materials (Belch and Belch,
2009). Sales promotion is short term incentive to encourage the purchase or sales of a product or
service. Sales promotion offers reasons to buy now where as advertising and personal selling
offer reasons to buy a product or service (Kottler, 2004).

2.2.4. Public relations

Public relation –defined as a management function which evaluate public attitude ,identifies the
policies and procedures of an individual organization with the public interest and execute a

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program of action to earn public understanding and acceptance (Belch and Belch, 2009). Public
relation is building good relations with the company’s various publics by obtaining favorable
publicity, building up a good “Corporate image” and handling or heading off unfavorable
rumors, stories, and events (kottler, 1999).

2.2.5. Personal Selling

Personal selling is a form of person-to-person communication in which the seller attempt to

assist and/or persuade prospective buyer to purchase the company’s product or service to act on
an idea. Unlike advertising, personal selling involves direct contact between buyer and seller
either face-to-face or through some form of telecommunication such as telephone sales (Belch
and Belch, 2009).

2.3. Promotion communication process

The communication process begins when the promotional communication determine what
information is to be communicated and encodes the message in form of appropriate symbols,
(using words, pictures ,actions)than the message is transmitted to receiver over the same
medium as a television show and magazines. The entire promotional activity can be seen, very
simply as asset of six broad steps and they are:

1. Set promotional objective

2. Identify the target audience
3. Select the message
4. Select the media
5. Budget
6. Monitor ,test and control

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2.4. Managing promotion strategy

Developing and implementing effective promotion strategies is a complex difficult task .no
simple approach or formula can guarantee on effective in managing promotional strategies
include;

1) Analyze consumer’s product relationship.

2) Determine promotion objective and budget.
3) Design and implement promotional strategies.
4) Evaluate effective of promotional strategy
2.5. Budgeting for promotional strategy

Promotional budget may defer not only in amount but also in composition .industrial firms
generally invest large proportion of their budget in personal selling than in advertising while the
reverse is usually true for most products of consumers good (Belch and Blech, 2009).

2.6. Insurance
2.6.1. Definition of insurance

Insurance can be defined from two points of view, from individual point of view and from the
social point of view. From an individual point of view, insurance is an economic device where
by individuals substitute a small certain cost (the premium) for a large uncertain financial loss
(the contingency insured against) that would exist if it were not for the insurance. Insurance is
the protection against financial loss provided by an insurer .the primary function of insurance is
the creation of the counter part of risk, which is security. Insurance does not decrease the
uncertainty for the individuals as to whether the event will occur, nor does it alter the probability
of occurrence, but it does reduce the probability of financial loss connected with the event
(Tekelgiorgis, 2004).

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2.6.2. Benefit and cost of insurance

Benefit of insurance to society

Insurance has advantages as a device to handle risk and so as to be used to bring about the
greatest economic advantage to the society. (Teklegiorgis, 2004)

Cost of insurance to society

Although the insurance industry provide enormous social and economic benefit to society, the
social cost of insurance must also be recognized .the major social costs of insurance include the
following (tekelgiorgis, 2004)

- Operating expense –insurer incur expense such, expense involved as loss control costs
,loss adjustment expenses ,expense involved in underwriting converge ,premium taxes
and general administrative expenses .these expense ,plus a reasonable amount of profit
and contingencies ,must be covered by the premium charged .in real terms ,workers and
other resources that might have been committed to other uses are required.
- Losses that are intentionally caused– a second social cost of insurance is attribute to the
fact that If it were not for insurance ,certain losses would not occur –losses that are
caused intentionally by people in order to collect on their policies . Some unscrupulous
persons can make or believe that they make a profit by bringing about a loss
- Inflated claim- many claim are inflated because of insurance .the loss may not be
intentionally caused by the insured ,but the claim may be inflated ,in other word ,it may
exceed the actual financial loss experienced by the insured .for example ,physician may
charge higher fees for surgical procedure covered by major medical health insurance
.there inflated claim must be recognized as an important social cost of insurance
.premium must be increased to cover losses and disposable income and the consumption
of other goods/services is there by reduced.

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 CHAPTER THREE

3. Research Methodology
3.1. Research Design

This study will use descriptive research design in order to examine its objective. The purpose of
descriptive research is to examine phenomena that are occurred at a specific time and place.
Descriptive research is concern with condition, practices, structures, differences or relationship
that exist opinions help process that are going on or trend that are evident. Therefore, this study
will conduct based on a descriptive research design.

3.2. Study area

The study area will be in Africa insurance company at Hawassa branch.

3.3. Source of Data

In order to collect the various necessary data, the researcher will use both primary and secondary
source of data. Primary data will be collected from the respondents through questionnaires and
interview. Secondary data will be collected from documentary sources which include books,
previous research paper, company magazines website and other reports of the company.

3.4. Data Collection Instruments

The present study will use both questionnaire and interview to collect data. Questionnaires will
be prepared in order to collect data from the customers of Africa insurance share company. The
questionnaires’ include both open and close end question. Interview guideline will be prepared to
collect data from the Marketing manager of the company.

3.5. Population of the study

The target group of the present study will be Africa insurance company customers and marketing
manager of the company.

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3.6. Sampling Technique

Judgmental non-probability sampling technique will be used for selecting the marketing manager
of the company because, it used to the specialty of an authority can select more representative
sample that can bring more accurate result than using other non-probability sampling technique.
The process involves nothing but purposely handpicking of the marketing manager of the
company based on authority and judgment. And also this study will use convenience sampling
technique for selecting customers, because this is more convenient and less expense to gather
information and give full freedom for the researcher to select the respondents.

3.7. Sample Size

Sample size of the present study will be determined based on the recommendation of scholars in
the area. Therefore, the total sample of the present study will be 36; 1 the marketing manager of
the company; will be selected by using judgmental sampling; and the remaining 35 samples will
be customer of the company, will be selected through convenience sampling technique.

3.8. Data analysis Techniques

The most crucial part of the research design is the analysis and interpretation of data. After the
data are collected, the researcher gives full attention for the analysis and interpretation. The
methods of analysis for this research will be both qualitative and quantitative data analysis for
this study will use table, percentage method and frequency distribution.

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 3.9. Work and financial plan
3.9.1. Work Plan for the Research

S.N Activities Months in Ethiopian Calendar 2012 Remarks

o

Oc Nov Dec Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Au Sep-
t y g Dec
1 Preliminary field X
work
2 First phase field work
observation and site X
selection
3 Second phase
questionnaire X
administration
4 Third phase
interviews X
5 Literature review
X
6 Data categorization
and organization X
7 Data analysis X X X
8 Writing up X
information
9 Editing X
10 Compiling and X
submitting first draft

3.9.2. Financial plan of the study

The following expenses are vital for the successful accomplishment of the proposed research
work
NO Materials and Equipment Unit Quantity Birr Total(Birr)
Stationary materials &
Equipment
1 White paper Reams 3 100 50
2 Computer paper Reams 3 100 200
3 Photo copy service Piece 300 50 150
4 Printing cost Pages 150 5 100
5 Writing of paper Pages 100 3 50
6 Binding Piece 10 100 200
7 Pens Pack 2 65 50
8 Pencils Pack 2 15 50
9 Books (Photo copy) Pages 20 50 100
10 Transport cost 100
Subtotal-1 1050

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References
Armstrong, l. and kotler (1996). Principle of marketing “(7th edition), me grawil.

Belch, E. and Blech, A. (2009). Advertisement and Promotion

Kottler, P. (2004). Principle of marketing 10th edition north western university

Phlilpkotler (1999). Principle of marketing”8th edition ,USA.

Teklegiorgis A. (2004). Risk management and insurance.

William, D. (2002). Basic marketing, 2nd edition tata mc graw hill

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