INTERNAL MARKETING

Internal Marketing

Internal Marketing

Introduction

In order to understand the concept of internal marketing, we first need to know what an internal market is. An internal market is one which functions within the organisation or a couple of organisations that have separate internal components. Each of these separate components provides its service and interfaces with the others. With in the United Kingdom, (British Broadcasting Company (BBC) was the first to introduce an internal market along with its various components, Production, technology and so forth (Bell 1998, pp. 56-64).

The process of Internal Marketing (IM) takes place within the organisation. This process aligns, empowers and motivates all the employees of the organisation, regardless of their hierarchal position, to deliver the customers a gratifying experience. During the past few years, this process has become an integral part of employee brand management and employee branding. The purpose behind this move is to create stronger bonds between the customer and employee brand experience. As stated by Burkitt and Zealley, "The challenge for internal marketing is not only to get the right messages across, but to embed them in such a way that they both change and reinforce employee behaviour” (marketingteacher.com).

Internal marketing is a key implementation tool, which not only aids communication within the organisation, but also helps in overcoming the resistance amongst employees resulting from the change. It informs all the employees about the new strategies and initiatives, while involving them in it simultaneously. Internal marketing is not at all complex to implement, specially, when the firm is familiar with traditional marketing principles.

The leading concepts of internal marketing comprise of:

IM implemented as an internal process of continuous skill improvement program

Aligning employee behaviour with strategic objectives of the organisation

Internalizing the principal values of the organisation into employees

Empowerment, reframing and motivation of attitudes of employees.

An inside-out approach to management.

Ensuring that a positive customer experience is the core of all business strategies and objectives (Brown and Peterson, 1993, pp. 63-77).

Internal Marketing-Oriented Businesses

Commonly, organisations that have the following features opt for implementing internal marketing;

Enabling a culture of empowerment: when employees are allowed by management, to actively participate, in organisational decisions a culture of employee empowerment is created. When employees are empowered, they are allowed to take creative and innovative initiatives; while having a sense of responsibility and accountability of the decisions which they make.

Practicing participative hiring: when companies encourage their employees to participate in hiring future employees.

Guaranteeing fair rewards and recognition: businesses exercising the practice of giving rewards and recognition to their employees according to their performance

An organisational structure, which allows re-engineering, learning and total quality management (Caruana and Calleya, pp. 108-16).

Managing the Implementation of Internal Marketing (Jobber 1995)

As we all know, the process of marketing follows a common pattern for which the acronym of AOSTC id used. AOSTC stands for Analysis, Objectives, Strategies, tactics and Control. Jobber (1995) used a somewhat similar method for implementing the process of internal marketing within the organisation. The process is simple and straightforward including the following steps;

Setting the goals of internal marketing; for instance, ...