Identifying and Prioritizing Dimensions and Indicators of Customer Lifetime Value for Supplemental Health Insurance Industry

Abstract

Objectives: This study aimed to identify and prioritize the dimensions and indicators of measuring customer lifetime value (CLV) for the supplemental health insurance industry. Methods: In this exploratory qualitative study, first, the initial dimensions and indicators of CLV were extracted through a scoping review. Next, 20 key informants, including academics and insurance industry experts, were selected by purposive sampling and then interviewed to identify and extract other dimensions and indicators of CLV for the supplemental health insurance industry. The data were collected using an in-depth and semi-structured interview and analyzed using the fuzzy analytic hierarchy process (AHP). Results: Out of 232 retrieved articles, 13 studies were eligible to include in this scoping review. After reviewing this study, seven general factors, including customer profitability, service cost, customer retention rate, revenue, discount rate, and time and price paid by the customer, were identified as effective factors in CLV. Moreover, 61 comments were identified after interviewing experts (at the first stage of the interview). Then, after three stages of semi-structured interviews, 17 comments were removed, and 44 comments were approved. Finally, three dimensions, including profitability, customer loyalty, and value co-creation, and 13 indicators, including customer satisfaction, trust, repurchase intention, customer trust, brand performance to repurchase, financial purchasing pattern, service delivery pattern, information search, information sharing, co-production, feedback, helping, and tolerance, were extracted. After conducting the fuzzy AHP, profitability (0.652), customer loyalty (0.226), and customer value co-creation (0.122) were the most important dimensions for CLV, respectively. Additionally, purchase pattern (0.274), financial procedures (0.261), and service delivery pattern (0.117) had the highest priority among the indicators, respectively. Conclusions: According to the results, although customer profitability was the most important dimension to measure CLV, CLV is a combinatorial concept. Therefore, the dimensions of customer loyalty and customer value co-creation should be taken into consideration as effective dimensions in predicting and measuring the concept.