How Do Canadians Buy Insurance?
By asking their friends, of course.
A recent study commisioned by PC Insurance concluded that people like to ask friends, family memebers, and coworkers about where and what insurance to purchase. This makes logical sense. We want to make the right decision about our insurance and we tend to ask the people we look up to in order to see what they did in a similar situation.
This shouldn't come as a surprise. Recent studies have concluded that word-of-mouth is the cause of anywhere from 20-50% of all purchases we make*. That means the majority of the decisions we're making on a regular basis are influenced by others far more than we'd like to admit.
In Robert Cialdini's Influence the Psychology of Persuasion he talks about the concept of "social proof". Social Proof describes when we are trying to make a decision and when we don't particlularly know for certain which side of the fence we sit on, we tend to look to what others have done in a similar situation. When it comes to buying insurance, we like to know where and what others have purchased before making the decision for ourselves.
