The ‘Chartered Institute of Marketing’ defines marketing as ‘The management process responsible for identifying, anticipating and satisfying customer requirements profitability’. According to Kotler, ‘Marketing is the social process by which individuals and groups obtain what they need and want through creating and exchanging products and value with others’. The term ‘marketing’ has continuously altered and evolved over time and modern marketing focuses on supplying constant benefits to customers, following which business and trade will occur. Thus, the concept of marketing is actually a philosophy according to which the customer (wherever he/she may exist, internally or externally), and the subsequent contentment of his or her requirements is the central point of all business actions.
Internal marketing (IM) is an unending process that takes place strictly within a corporation or organization whereby the serviceable process supports, encourages, and authorizes the workforce at all the levels of management, thereby enabling them to constantly deliver gratifying consumer experiences. Day and Wensley state that the employees are the company’s internal customers. Thus internal marketing entails that by means of internal marketing, companies and businesses must supply to their employees, products that gratify their requirements whilst they work hard to accomplish the goals of the association. These products include jobs, approaches, behaviors, or principles of the organization.
According to Grönroos, the rationale behind internal marketing is to encourage human resources towards focused services and consumer inclined performances. Bak states that internal marketing should be viewed as a process of communication for the development of a pleasant and constructive employee culture within the organization. Employees within the organizations should be treated as partners who make available products and services to external customers or consumers. Preferably then, internal marketing ought to be a cooperative process of communication among the employees and management which can be fruitfully used to initiate a teamwork effort within the organization.
Thus we see that whereas marketing, in general, is a process that involves the entire society at large, internal marketing basically involves the constant motivation of the employees of a company so that they are successfully able to accomplish the marketing goals set by the managers of the company and in the process creating satisfied and content customers which will in turn automatically enhance the profitability and the reputation of the entire business.