Insurance Sales Agents and the Internet: The Relationship Between Opinion Leadership, Subjective Knowledge, and Internet Attitudes

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The Internet offers a number of opportunities and threats for insurance sales agents. On the one hand, the Internet provides opportunities to communicate with and reach customers. However, it also introduces the risk of losing business to insurance providers or competitors. These opportunities and threats create a need to understand the characteristics that may affect the views of insurance agents regarding the Internet and its impact on their business. This paper compares insurance sales agents' scores on an opinion leadership scale (Flynn, Goldsmith, and Eastman 1996) and subjective knowledge scale (Flynn and Goldsmith 1999) with their attitudes toward the Internet. The results suggest that those insurance sales agents with a higher level of subjective knowledge about the Internet are more likely to be opinion leaders about the Internet. Both opinion leaders and those with higher levels of subjective knowledge have a more positive attitude about the Internet, but only the relationship with opinion leadership is significant. In addition, those insurance sales agents who are younger (than the approximate mean age of 46 years old) are more likely to be opinion leaders and have a higher level of subjective knowledge of the Internet. The results suggest that perceived knowledge and the willingness to discuss the Internet with others impact one's attitude of it, and that the younger insurance agents will play a leading role in how the Internet will be used.