Technology Readiness in the e-Insurance Industry: An Exploratory Investigation and Development of an Agent Technology e-Consumption Model

We set out in this study to assist e-Insurance marketers in developing a research-based foundation on which to make strategic decisions related to technology/ Internet implementation. In this study we focused on the agents of a single, mediumsized insurance/financial services concern operating primarily in the Midwest of the United States. Our first inquiry demonstrates that Parasuraman’s (2000) Technology Readiness Index (TRI) appears largely generalizable to the insurance industry within the constraints identified in this study. The TRI explains almost two-thirds of the explained variance in agents’ self-reported perceptions of technology readiness in our study, and it appears that the positive dimensions of optimism and innovativeness are most influential in facilitating technology readiness. Our second research inquiry concerned developing an e-Consumption model to help better understand how agents form their intentions to adopt and use technology and the Internet. The results suggest that general e-Consumption models from the services marketing literature appear to generalize to this internal marketing research setting. The managerial and research implications of this study are presented and discussed. [