The Purpose of this study is to explore the competition behaviors of the firms in life insurance industry and the performance between strategic groups to the environmental change.
There have been many changes in financial environment in Korea from late 1980's to 1994. The pressures to open the finance areas are increased especially after the UR Round, and the government policies to regulate the financial market are pointed out that it is getting ineffective, so the government decided to crash the barriers to strengthen the capabilities of the firm in finance areas.
Because of these dramatic changes of government policies, the competition intensity has increased, and make each firm adjust himself to the new environment to surrive.
In using the clustering analysis and other technique, emperical research is perfomed to 33 firms in life insurance companies in Korea.
There are some positive relationship between product/market scope and resource capabilities. As gonig from growth stage to mature stage, the key success factors in life insurance industry have changed. It is found that as more similier the scope, because of the intesity of competition, the possibility of the performance defference is increased.
The additional analysis revealed that during 1988 $\sim$ 1991 peroid the height of the mobility barrier-scale- was shorten and finally the other mobility barrier is getting important. The deductive methodology was used to analysis the difference of the strategy. It revealed that in using the deductive methodology the performance and the strategic difference could be seen more clearly but this method has some weakness that movement between strategic groups can't be explained clearly. But in this study the inductive method and the deductive method are complement rather than conflict.
Futher research, for exemple, the difference in the leader's background and case suudy of the firms that changed their strategic position, must be carried out later.
