Internal market orientation and its influence on organisational performance

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to analyse the influence that internal marketing, represented by internal market orientation (IMO), might have on the internal aspects (satisfaction of contact personnel) and external aspects (customer satisfaction and perceived quality of service) of organisational performance.

Design/methodology/approach – Interviews were carried out with all the cashiers of the 16 branches of a small, local credit institution, and with 160 customers who normally operate with this bank.

Findings – The results show that employee orientation or internal market orientation, through the dimension informal generation of information, influences the satisfaction of contact personnel, the quality of service perceived by the customer and, through the latter, the customer's satisfaction. It also corroborates the influence exerted by the contact personnel's satisfaction on the perception of quality and on the satisfaction of the customer receiving the service.

Research limitations/implications – The main limitation of the study is that it analyses a single financial entity, with the characteristics and behaviours that the latter has in its relationship with its employees.

Practical implications – One of the key elements for achieving quality in the service offered by the contact personnel is to achieve their satisfaction. For this, it is necessary for firms to adopt an employee or internal marketing orientation so that the contact personnel come to perceive fair treatment and special attention by managers towards them and their work.

Originality/value – The paper verifies the validity and reliability of the internal market orientation construct (IMO) as a scale of measurement of the internal marketing concept in a different business sector and with a different methodology from those dealt with in the literature. It also demonstrates empirically the influence of IMO on variables internal to the organisation (satisfaction of contact personnel) and external to it (customer's satisfaction and the quality he/she perceives).