The Impact of Internal Marketing Activities on Customer Service Performance in Healthcare Industry

2.1. Internal Marketing (IM)

Barry stated that internal marketing was introduced 30 years ago to achieve the quality of service for a significant problem that existed in the area of services (Barry, 1981). Grönroos maintained that, to have satisfied customers, the company should first have satisfied its employees, those who motivate and represent the quality of the services they provide. This motivation comes from the employees who are considered as customers, which is a method to job designing and service branding for supplying the market (Grönroos, 1993). Since long ago, Day and Wensley argued that marketing performance should focus on the initiating, negotiating and managing exchanges between internal and external areas of the company. Barry expressed that the concept of internal marketing in which companies and employee are regarded as market and internal customers respectively was introduced in 1980s. As noted by Ambler, in many businesses, especially service sector businesses, employees are the first customers. Consumers are likely to be the final customers, but the brand of employee comes at the beginning. Culter defines internal marketing in terms of success in the employing, training and motivating the employees capable of providing services for customers. George and Gronroos have also stated that, therefore, in some cases, internal marketing reflects the desirable performance of human resource management. Heskett et al. said that, the loyalty of external customers stems from external customers’ satisfaction, which in itself depends on the loyalty of internal customers (Nigel, Michael and Leyland, 2003).