Marketing communication: principles and practice

I N T E R N A L M A R K E T I N G C O M M U N I C A T I O N
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appropriate discretionary action to satisfy each customer as long as they
believe that it is in the corporation’s long-run best interests. What is required
is the intentional building of a working climate which fosters improvement
and innovation – the learning corporation.
Internal marketing can be seen as a means of promoting marketing
orientation. Logically, as in McKenna’s compelling view, marketing orien-
tation of the corporation can lead to competitive advantage through:
company and customer working so closely together that selling, no
longer a discrete function, is subsumed in problem solving.
(McKenna, 1991: 49)
Internal marketing is important as a tool for legitimizing strategic actions. A
framework for action is created by ‘framing’ the company and its context
(opportunities, constraints, and market segments), and communicating 
the mission to the employees. There is a conscious attempt to infuse the
corporation with the dominant values, or the values of the dominant coalition
of the corporation. In this way a ‘marketing culture’ may be encouraged.
CORPORATE IDENTIFICATION, IDENTITY,
IMAGE, AND REPUTATION
Most, if not all, employees are in a position to affect customers’ behaviour
and their beliefs about the corporation and their products. Corporate identity
and corporate reputation are increasingly seen as major strategic issues to 
be managed. Corporate communications management is integral to the
marketer’s responsibilities and links to the core management function as
impression management. The proportion of customer-oriented employees
in the corporation’s workforce can make a significant difference to its
competitive position in the marketplace.
Humans need involvement and identification with other humans. In the
past, community was based on proximal relationships of cooperation –
strength in numbers, and in the sharing of tasks such as hunting, tending
livestock, and cooking. Today, cooperative community (Halal, 1996) is
rooted in much more psychologically open factors, such as feelings of
acceptance and approval (status, etc.), and this requires some willingness to
conform and to adapt to the needs of others in return for being considered
an ‘insider’ and not an ‘outsider’. 
People need to identify with others and motivating causes or purposes.
They need to feel that they can realize personal goals through a commitment
to contributing to collective goals. Otherwise, why cooperate? Affiliation in
work is now a basic human need as the social institutions of community
involvement – organized religion and extended family – have declined.
Communication is the basis of identification. We evaluate our position in
relation to the values of others and may come to accept the goals of others
as our own, thus bringing them into close proximity, or overlapping, or even
merging our selves/identities. We come to our working arrangements (jobs,