Mamedova E. Management of competitiveness of insurance companies on the market of travel services.

The thesis is devoted to the improvement of theoretical provisions, development of methodological support and practical recommendations for managing the competitiveness of insurance companies on the market of travel services. The first section of the paper systematizes the views of scientists and analyzes the literature on the definition of "competitiveness", "competitiveness management", "travel insurance", the results of which substantiate the definition of "management of competitiveness of insurance companies on the market of travel services". It was investigated the relation between competitiveness and other concepts of competition theory, such as “the competitiveness of insurance services (products)”, “the attractiveness of insurance services (products)”, “competitive advantage”, “competitive position”, “competitive potential” and “competitive strategy”. It is established that the basis for ensuring the competitiveness of the insurance company on the market of travel services is the development of a balanced competitive strategy and the availability of competitive potential, the goal is to achieve targeted competitive positions on the market of travel services. It was developed recommendations for the formation of a marketing mechanism for managing the competitiveness of insurance companies on the market of travel services based on clarifying its essence and composition, as well as identifying priority marketing tools by identifying key components of marketing mix models, which will allow to take into account the main aspects of competitiveness in its management. The composition of quantitative and qualitative indicators on key components of competitiveness of insurance companies in the market of tourist services on the basis of the analysis of literature sources is offered. The second section of the paper proposes a matrix for determining the competitive positions of insurance companies on market of travel services with the axes of growth of gross travel insurance premiums and the share of the insurance company on the travel services market. According to the key components of the competitiveness of insurance companies on the market of travel services the system of the most representative indicators is formed by: selection of the initial list of indicators on the basis of generalization of literary sources; elimination of high functional dependence between indicators using correlation analysis; reducing the number of coefficients using multidimensional factor analysis – the method of principal components. Based on the factor load method for each component of competitiveness, models for calculating integrated indicators were proposed, and with using of the three-sigma rule interval scales were developed to divide these indicators into five levels, which forms tools for identifying imbalances or potential opportunities in certain aspects of insurance competitiveness management on the market of travel services, which makes it possible to develop in a timely manner reasonable measures to neutralize weaknesses and stay ahead of competitors on the market of travel services. Based on the model of multifactor linear regression and application of three-sigma rule, a methodical approach to integrated assessment of competitiveness of insurance companies on the travel services market was proposed, which provides analysis of the impact of the proposed system of indicators on key components of competitiveness on the dynamics of competitive positions and allows to identify the weight of each component in the integrated indicator and to establish qualitative levels of competitiveness of insurers, which is an analytical basis for managing its condition in the current and long-term perspective. In order to predict the decrease in the ability of insurance companies to compete with competitors on the market of travel services and identify the need to change the competitive strategy it was developed methodological provisions to determine the probability of changes in the levels of competitiveness of insurance companies in the market of travel services based on convergent-divergent analysis and the use of the Markov chain method, which take into account the key components of competitiveness in its integrated assessment. The third section summarizes the composition of indicators and proposes a methodical approach to identifying the stages of the life cycle of insurance companies on the travel services market. Based on the construction of the multi-line optimization problem, a model of optimization of the insurance company's share in the market of tourist services is formed. The practical value of individual results is confirmed by their introduction into the activities of the insurance company PJSC "Industrial Insurance Company" (№ 103 from 05.10.2020), travel agency LLC "Nice Travel" (№ 114-1 from 25.11.2020) and the use in the educational process of S. KUZNETS KhNUE (№ 20 / 86-38-196 / 1 dated 28.12.2020).