How can social marketing be applied to micro-insurance?

Tentative Answer

While social marketing in the field of health micro-insurance is a very new subject, it has been used extensively in international health programmes, especially for contraceptives and oral rehydration therapy, and is being used with more frequency for a diversity of health-related topics to achieve sustained changes in health behaviours.

In the context of health micro-insurance, marketing can be thought of as an analytical tool to study and get to know the beneficiary. This in turn allows us to:

• build awareness among the primary target audience (often people excluded from statutory social protection systems) on the concept of insurance as well as among the secondary audience, who can exert influence over the primary audience in their decision to join a health insurance program as well as provide the means to allow for the possibility of a behaviour change.
• develop products and services which correspond to actual needs and take into account the specificities of micro-insurance contexts (for example, limited financial resources, traditional distribution channels, issues related to gender, unfamiliarity with the concept of insurance, etc,).

Sources:
Promoting Health Micro-Insurance Schemes to Local Communities. Workshop Documentation. ILO/STEP 25-28 May 2004.