A Mind Genomics Cartography of Insurance for Home Project Contracts: Selling to the ‘Mind’ of the Insurance Prospect

Abstract

The paper introduces the science and process of Mind Genomics as a process by which to reveal the mind of prospects regarding the factors surrounding insurance, specifically insurance that the home contractor will complete the project satisfactorily. There are a lot of insurance companies in the world, and, in turn, a great deal of advertising, advertising testing, and an entire world of professional consumer researchers supporting the effort to sell the advertising. The objective is to uncover the existence and nature of groups of people sharing the same point of view about what they want in such insurance. The Mind Genomics process works through experimental design, presenting respondents with vignettes, combinations of messages about insurance, totally different combinations for each respondent. The subsequent analysis by regression reveals which messages make the respondent feel comfortable with the project and the insurance versus which messages make the respondent feel insecure and ready to drop the project. The data suggest three mind-sets of people: project-focused, contractor-focused, and legal/finance-focused, respectively, corresponding to different aspects of the contracting relationship. We introduce the PVI, personal viewpoint identifier, to assign a new person to one of these three mind-sets, to aid sales and client service.