Internal Marketing
Internal marketing involves the promotion of a company's values, goals, and brand identity to its own employees. The aim is to align the internal culture and employee behavior with the company's external marketing efforts, ultimately enhancing customer satisfaction and loyalty. This approach recognizes the crucial role of employees as brand ambassadors and advocates within the organization.
7 Key excerpts on "Internal Marketing"
eBook - ePubStrategic Hospitality Leadership
The Asian Initiative
- Russell Arthur Smith, Judy Siguaw, Russell Arthur Smith, Judy Siguaw(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...Internal Marketing is an ongoing process of preparing our employees at all management levels to be customer-conscious and to handle every customer interaction with complete knowledge and awareness of the company’s brand promise. It is about getting every staff member to buy into our brand message and to speak of this same brand story all the time. It is a long-term exercise rather than short-term. A good Internal Marketing strategy is able to pay off handsomely for the organization as having the employees “be the brand” is not only a more holistic approach to hospitality marketing, it is also rather cost-effective. Organizations can implement Internal Marketing much less expensively than they can external marketing. In the long run, an organization is able to capitalize on its Internal Marketing communication where there is an alignment of the organization’s purpose with employee behavior, senior management leadership style, continual staff motivation, and fulfillment. In turn, employees will naturally be happier, more productive, and less likely to leave the company, which means staff-turnover rate can see a marked improvement, in an industry where job-hopping is a perpetual problem. Internal Marketing focuses on using the same voice that communicates with the brand customers to the brand employees. People are what make a company unique. By ensuring that employees are cared for and cultivated to represent the company’s brand, they will go the extra mile in providing the most unique brand message. The integrated function of Internal Marketing to employ and retain good staff stands to provide a real competitive edge for our company, Frasers Hospitality. When we have the best designer, top sales manager, or first-rate sommelier in our company, we have the majority of the customers buying into the brand because of these people...
eBook - ePub- Sally Dibb, Lyndon Simkin(Authors)
- 2007(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...40: Internal Marketing Key definitions Internal Marketing is the application of marketing within the company, utilizing programmes of communication and guidance targeted at internal audiences to develop responsiveness and a unified sense of purpose among employees. Relationship marketing develops on-going relationships with customers by focusing on maintaining links between marketing, quality and customer service. The six domains of relationship marketing are customer markets, influencers, referral, employee recruitment, suppliers and internal markets within the business. Key issues Internal Marketing is the application of marketing internally within an organization. Marketing communications targeting the workforce ensure staff understanding and cooperation. The intention is to facilitate the implementation of marketing strategies and marketing plans. Increasingly, customers demand high levels of service. The staff providing this service must be fully conversant with a business's strategy, brand positioning and basis for competing. Internal Marketing helps ensure this understanding pervades the organization. The Internal Marketing concepts holds that all staff have ‘suppliers’ and ‘customers’ (other staff colleagues) in the business. The expectations, needs and perceptions of these people must be managed. Internal Marketing requires information sharing, orientation of staff, multifunctional team interaction, Internal Marketing communications, debrief sessions, staff motivation programmes, empowerment of line management to deal with emergent problems, plus ‘success stories’ to champion. Staff must be carefully selected, well trained, motivated and encouraged to provide good service. Conceptual overview In businesses that have fully embraced the marketing philosophy, much appears to hinge on Internal Marketing. This is the application of marketing internally within the organization, with programmes of communication and guidance targeted at internal audiences...
eBook - ePubTrends in Asia Pacific Business and Management Research
Relevance and Use of Literature Reviews
- Chris Rowley, Justin Paul, Chris Rowley, Justin Paul(Authors)
- 2022(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Adopting the behavioural approach, Berry (1981) defines Internal Marketing as the idea of jobs as internal products offered to internal customers (employees), who deliver product and service value and external customer satisfaction. However, Grönroos (1981) postulates that Internal Marketing aims to obtain and retain motivated customer-conscious staff at all organizational levels by improving communication and coordinating tasks between customer service staff and support staff (Grönroos 1981). In line with Grönroos (1981), George (1990) suggests that Internal Marketing is a philosophy that considers employees to be a group of internal stakeholders, whose needs must be met so that they can meet the needs of the external customers. Piercy and Morgan (1991) recommend that Internal Marketing strategies use external marketing techniques (4Ps) to handle problems and opportunities within the organization. Gummesson (1987) introduced the term ‘internal customer’. He defines Internal Marketing as a process for integrating all employees and functions into a customer-supplier relationship as part of the service value chain. This internal network of customers and suppliers creates interdependence between individuals, serving external customers and improving service quality and customer satisfaction. Based on the mechanistic approach of Gummesson (1987), Ballantyne (2003) defines Internal Marketing as a method of channelling staff commitment and teamwork to enhance external marketplace performance. In a similar vein, albeit in the context of the service value chain, Roberts-Lombard (2010) argues that the purpose of Internal Marketing is to motivate, retain, and attract employees to serve business objectives...
- Ray Donnelly, Colin Linton, Colin Linton(Authors)
- 2010(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Therefore systems and processes covering resources (financial, people and equipment) need to be put in place to ensure products are delivered to customers within agreed timescales to the quality standards set by the organisation. This requires effective coordination of activities so that all staff are working towards the same goals. Internal Marketing has two main aspects: All employees and departments have an internal and external customer Staff must work together in a way that is aligned to the organisation’s mission And the overall objective of Internal Marketing is to improve the quality of service offered to customers. Internal Marketing is shaped by the prevailing culture of the organisation as it is this culture which provides the context within which Internal Marketing takes place. An Internal Marketing plan (derived from the overall marketing plan) is necessary to ensure the achievement of organisation goals and the key components of an internal plan could include: Organisation aims and objectives Marketing strategy Segmentation, targeting and positioning (STP) Marketing programmes (see below) Implementation Monitoring and control Internal Communication Methods Marketing communications is concerned with the way various stakeholders interact with each other and internal communications relates to the way stakeholders within an organisation communicate with each other and receive marketing attention. It draws a boundary between internal and external stakeholders. Internal stakeholders are employees and management who are interested in different issues, however, it is generally accepted that employees should be the key focus of internal communication. Many organisations refer to the concept of ‘treating employees as customers’. Indeed in many cases this may literally be true if they are also, for example, shareholders or customers...
eBook - ePubThe Marketing Century
How Marketing Drives Business and Shapes Society
- Jeremy Kourdi, Jeremy Kourdi(Authors)
- 2011(Publication Date)
- Wiley(Publisher)
...To achieve this, the objectives of Internal Marketing developed not only to satisfy external customers through satisfying service employees, but also to motivate the whole workforce towards service-mindedness and customer-orientated performance. Here, the internal market of employees is best motivated to adopt service-mindedness and customer-orientated behaviours by an active, marketing-like approach, where marketing-like activities are used internally. The mix of Internal Marketing activities that could be deployed is based on the assumption that the organisation is relationships-based and has a network of groups. Internal Marketing activity uses a mix of tools, including training, management support, empowering and enabling employees, internal mass communication, human resource management, systems and technology support and, crucially, market research and mass external communications. In managing and deploying this range of activity, the aim is to influence the attitude of employees and develop two-way communication between management and employees, with the result that employees become part-time internal and external marketers (Gronroos, 2000). At this point there is a recognition that the marketing function’s stake in Internal Marketing is enhanced, as employees need to understand external communications and share internal and external market research. However, the main emphasis is on the organisation adopting ‘marketing-like’ practices to address this internal market of employees...
eBook - ePub- Pervaiz K. Ahmed, Mohammed Rafiq(Authors)
- 2013(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...For example, Harrell and Fors apply the concept to manufacturing firms, and Ahmed and Rafiq propose it as a change management implementation methodology suitable for a wide range of contexts 21. The discussion of the third phase suggests that the scope of IM activity is much wider than motivation of employees towards customer consciousness. For instance, it can also be used to motivate non-contact employees towards behaving in a manner that enhances the service for end-customers. Taking these issues into account, in an earlier article, we defined Internal Marketing as ‘ planned effort to overcome organizational resistance to change and to align, motivate and integrate employees towards the effective implementation of corporate and functional strategies ’ 22. This definition incorporates the notion that any change in strategy is likely to require an IM effort to overcome organizational inertia and to motivate employees towards requisite behaviour. Furthermore, as some (including marketing) strategies are likely to span several functional areas, this is likely to require cross-functional integration. The above definition of IM appears capable of handling these issues within the remit of its boundary. Moreover, this definition also places less emphasis on the concept of employee as customer and more on the tasks and activities that need to be undertaken for the effective implementation of marketing and other programmes to achieve customer satisfaction, whilst recognizing the central role of employees. Synthesis and definition of Internal Marketing The review of work on IM indicates that there are a number of competing definitions and activities all claiming to address IM. From the analysis of the key conceptual and empirical literature, five main elements of Internal Marketing are identified...
eBook - ePubProfessional Practice in Health Care Marketing
Proceedings of the American College of Healthcare Marketing
- William Winston(Author)
- 2012(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...More critical from a management point of view will be success indicators of a more objective and practical nature; increased volumes of patients, lower rates of malpractice suits, lower employee turnover, higher productivity, etc. The connection between Internal Marketing effort, attitude changes and bottom-line results will necessarily be tenuous, at best. Management must strive to ensure that there are sufficient objective indicators of Internal Marketing results to be able to judge its overall contribution and weigh whether the program merits more or less effort. COMMUNICATION Internal Marketing communications incorporate what is learned through the information component and what is done in the action component. Communications may be directly between the hospital and its employees through orientation, training, continuing education, internal publicity and advertising. Communications may also be part of the hospital's external marketing communications efforts, with messages aimed indirectly at its own members. The purpose of Internal Marketing communications is to achieve and maintain a high level of motivation among the hospital's members in addition to providing them with the knowledge, skills and attitudes essential to effective marketing efforts on their part. While orientation, education and training are well-established traditions in hospitals, they are rarely recognized as marketing efforts. To the extent that such programs are aimed at persuading people to adopt or maintain patterns of behavior that will contribute to the hospital's benefit, they are essentially the same as any marketing communications effort. As such, they may employ any one or combination of personal interaction, publicity, advertising or incentive promotion techniques to accomplish their purpose. Internal Marketing communications through personal interaction may involve face-to-face contact between individuals, in small groups or in large in-service classes or presentations...
