The Importance of Internal Marketing for Companies

Internal marketing, consists of employees within the organization. Everyone in the organization, from the top executive to the lowest-level staff members, constitutes the company’s internal market. While businesses used to focus primarily on external customers when developing their marketing strategies, today’s businesses have begun to focus just as much on internal customers as they do on external ones. In today's highly competitive business environment, companies are tailoring their marketing strategies accordingly. Decisions made together with internal customers can be implemented more easily compared to those made with external customers, and they return to the business as customer satisfaction and customer loyalty. For example, it is difficult to measure values, such as service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty in the service sector. However, thanks to their well-trained, high-quality staff, the service sector shows positive differences in areas such as service quality and customer loyalty. In other words, as a business, by providing its own employees with opportunities to socialise in addition to financial and emotional support, thereby helping them to boost their morale, the business will have a positive impact not only on its employees but also on its external customers.

Businesses in the food and beverage industry are constantly competing with one another. Due to this competition, customer satisfaction and service quality are crucial for retaining external customers. The company will continuously improve service quality and employee satisfaction by maintaining open communication with its employees.

LITERATURE REVIEW

1. The Concept of a Customer

A customer is a person who purchases the products or services a business produces for them, and who provides the business with the most significant support in achieving its goals regarding the market position and standing of those products or services.

Internal customers are employees who contribute to the production of goods and services.

An external customer is someone who consumes or uses the products produced by an internal customer.

2. The Concept and Importance of Internal Marketing

According to Berry, the fundamental reasons for internal marketing are that a company’s employees recognise that managers place importance on quality service, that staff are satisfied with the work they do, and that they are able to fulfil the company’s expectations. In service businesses, the traditional marketing mix is considered not as 4Ps but as 7Ps with the addition of three more elements, namely people, process, and physical environment, which makes internal marketing even more important. In the 7Ps of the marketing mix, one of the elements, "people," refers to internal customers, namely employees.

According to Attia and Attallah (2012), internal marketing should be used to create an ideal working environment for employees, so that they can work in a more coordinated manner.

The Purpose of Internal Marketing

• 1. Retaining skilled staff within the organisation by developing their skills.
• 2. Collaborate with the individual management team to implement economic improvements that enhance employees’ experience and skills.
• 3. Focusing on quality to deliver services that stand out in a competitive market within a changing economic, political and technological environment.
• 4. To position the organisation as a brand in the eyes of both external customers and employees.
• 5. To increase productivity by providing staff for the business.

3. Segmentation of the Domestic Market

One of the objectives of businesses is to segment the market in order to ensure customer satisfaction in the domestic market.

• Liaison Officers: Employees who are in constant contact with external clients.
• Modifiers: Employees who have less contact with external customers, as this work is not usually carried out face-to-face.
• Influencers: Employees who make decisions regarding the establishment of relationships with external customers, although they do not communicate with them directly.
• Isolated staff: Employees who have no contact whatsoever with external customers.