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Service organizations face various issues and challenges. Berry (1981) has proposed the term Internal Marketing as a solution to multidisciplinary problems i.e. marketing, human resources and operations. This paper evaluates how different environmental settings have different interpretations of internal marketing. 70 research papers and reports, both quantitative and qualitative, have been analysed to fulfil the objectives of this research. This paper reviews the literature asserting concepts and constructs of internal marketing. It presents a discussion on the defining Internal Marketing (IM) objectives, theories and constructs that are relevant to the context of internal marketing. Finally a definition of internal marketing is proposed that can be useful for any service enterprise and moreover it can be utilised by any enterprise using and delivering service.
INTRODUCTION
More than 35 years ago, internal marketing was first proposed as a solution to the problem of delivering high service quality consistently by Berry, Hensel, & Burke, (1976). The internal marketing (IM) concept emerged from services marketing and its main concern was to get everyone who was involved in service encounters - the front line squad of contact workforce- to engage insuperior service delivery during interaction with customers(Kaurav & Prakash, 2011).
Since 1970s, IM has appeared to be a solution tothe problem related withconsistantly delivering high service quality (Berry, Hensel, & Burke, 1976). The literature dedicated to IM is rapidly evolving and increasing (Sasser & Arbeit, 1976; Berry, 1981; Gronroos, 1981; Richardson & Robinson, 1986; Barnes, 1989; George, 1990; Piercy & Morgan, 1990, 1991; Collins & Payne, 1991; Piercy, 1995; Foreman & Money, 1995; Varey, 1995; Cahill, 1995, 1996; Sergeant & Asif, 1998; Pitt & Foreman, 1999; Varey & Lewis, 1999; Ballantyne, 2000; Rafiq & Ahmed, 2000; Bansal, Mendelson, & Sharma, 2001; Ahmed & Rafiq, 2003; Ballantyne, 2003; Lings, 2004; Lings & Greenley, 2005; Panigyrakis & Theodoridis, 2009).The above authors have produced prominent research in the area of IM. In the following few paragraphs the concept of IM is explored.
RATIONALE FOR STUDY
Various researchers have identified that service enterprises are not achieving higher performances significantly as they should. Recent doctoral research has identified the concept of internal marketing as a solution to various issues and challenges such as interfunctional coordination and integration, quality of service delivery, satisfaction and...