CHAPTER ONE                                          

1.0      INTRODUCTION

1.1   BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Internal marketing strategy is a concept that is aimed at driving the internal firms product personified in the employees. Therefore, this concept shares similar ideology with the theory of management by objective, which is aimed at integrating the employees goals and objectives into the firms overall objective to meet a congruency as to achieve the corporate goal and objective. We therefore, argued that without the actualization of the personnel objectives a firm will not achieve its maximum goals, even when it seems the goal is been achieved, the employee will on the other hand devise its own strategy of achievement, which eventually leads to nepotism; fraud; insubordination to the ground norms of the system.

An overview of internal marketing conceptual evolution is provided in other to justify the tacit and explicit support internal marketing has enjoyed in literature over the years. Rafiq and Ahmed (2000) in their observation classified internal marketing development in three separate phases, they are: the employee satisfaction phase; the customer orientation phase; and the strategy implementation or what they otherwise called the change management phase. The early definition of internal marketing through the customer orientation stance was based on a total quality management concept which focused on the firms service delivery process (Perry, 2008). In other words organizations were more interested in producing quality goods for its target markets; rather than concentrating on the personnel’s who man this process. The underlying theory is that effective service delivery requires motivated and customer-conscious employees (Gronroos, 2002).

Berry and Parasuraman (2001) defined internal marketing as viewing employees as internal customers; viewing jobs as internal products that satisfy the needs and wants of these internal customers while addressing the objectives of the firm. This employee satisfaction phase recognizes the complex nature of services marketing and its potential impact on IM in maximizing quality services delivery during buyer-seller interactions.

Rafiq and Ahmed (2000) defined internal marketing as planned effort using a marketing-like approach to overcome organizational resistance to change; align motivate and inter functional co-ordinate as well as integrate employees towards the effective implementation of corporate and functional strategies in order to deliver customer satisfaction through a process of creating motivated and customer oriented employees. Despite the different definitions of the term, it is generally agreed that the firm must engage first in marketing its internal customers (employees) if marketing goals must be achieved on its external customers.

In other words, by fulfilling employee needs, the firm produces certain employee outcomes which would in turn lead to higher satisfaction and loyalty from customers. Self determination theory proposes two types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation refers to behaviors that are performed because of the externally administered rewards that would result from the system. An extrinsically motivated person carries out actions in other to gain material or social benefits (Bateman and Crant, 2005).

Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from within or from the activity itself. While the intrinsically motivated person carries out actions for its sake and for its own rewards than in the hope of external benefits. Examples of intrinsic factors include interesting work, recognition, growth and achievement (Shadare and Hammed, 2009). Organizational commitment reflects a psychological bond that an individual identifies with an organization (Joo, 2008). Organizational commitment according to Malhotra and Mukherjee (2003) quoting Greenberg and Baron(2007) state that organizational commitment is the extent to which an individual identifies and is involved with his or her organization and/or is willing to leave it.

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