Marketing communication: principles and practice

participation in the marketing or exchange process, i.e. to make the corpora-
tion more marketing-oriented. Yet, the marketing concept itself is often
resisted! 
Internal marketing can be seen as a management approach that enables
and motivates all members of the corporation to examine their own role 
and communication competence and to adopt a customer consciousness and
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service orientation (which requires an interest in the problems of customers),
whether front-line service performers or back-office service support workers,
to meet the needs of external customers through a commitment to the
corporation’s goals. Everyone, then, must participate and share in the res-
ponsibility for dealings with customers. This is achieved through the
development of a service climate with service-mindedness, customer-
consciousness, and sales-mindedness pervading the corporation. Indeed,
internal marketing can focus on employee development. If corporation
members see themselves as part of a service delivery system, they can be
educated and persuaded that they are contributing to a customer-satisfying,
market-responsive system which should and can adapt.
Thus internal marketing provides a focus on a philosophy for customer
satisfaction. Grönroos (1990) also describes internal marketing as a
management philosophy that provides managers with an understanding and
appreciation for the roles of employees in the corporation, requiring that they
have a holistic view of their jobs. Managers then attend to service attitude
and communications. The idea that internal marketing is a philosophy has
been questioned – it may simply be, in practice, a set of techniques or a
sequence of activities. 
One view of internal marketing has marketers using the marketing pro-
cess to communicate customer needs and requirements and associated
implications throughout the corporation to ensure consistent focused
decision-making and action, and to motivate corrective action and method
improvements when design, production and delivery responsibilities for
fulfilling these needs are not met. This in turn requires the adoption of 
a customer paradigm to explain internal-market relations in which a
corporation-wide positive service attitude can be engendered by management
action. Thus customers become managers of the service supply and this is
a form of participative management. Internal marketing should therefore be
viewed as a management philosophy for both motivation and support, rather
than as a short-lived exhortation programme or campaign to boost attention
to customers. Staff experience the business (and not only their own job) –
their business and market consciousness is increased – and are prepared for
a service orientation by being conscious of customer relationships and their
own role in achieving customer satisfaction. However, the effectiveness 
of this internal-marketing approach is dependent on the effectiveness of
conventional marketing in the ‘inner market’.