support people who do not come into direct contact with the cus-
tomer, but who nevertheless have a very important role to perform
and who directly influence the service ultimately provided to the
customers. Gummesson uses the term ‘part-time marketer’ to
describe such employees.^15 Systematic internal marketing, there-
fore, is a mechanism for developing and maintaining these part-
time marketers as service-minded and customer-conscious
employees. Through internal marketing all employees can begin to
understand how their tasks, and the way they perform them, affect
customer satisfaction and contribute to a true marketing orientation.
In determining the linkages between internal service quality and
external service quality Heskett has provided a useful model of a
service profit chain.^28 This model suggests linkages between internal
service quality, employee satisfaction and productivity and external
customer satisfaction and the organization’s financial performance.
Work by Reynoso and Moores contributes towards identifying
internal service quality criteria and linking this to quality dimen-
sions used by customers.^29 Researching employees in health care
organizations, they were able to identify and assess quality dimen-
sions that were used to assess internal quality received from other
parts of the organization. Dimensions identified were similar to
those of the SERVQUAL instrument developed by Parasuraman,
Zeithaml and Berry, emphasizing the linkages between internal and
external quality management.^30 Their work reinforces the view that
organizations wishing to improve customer relationships need to
focus not only on external but also internal quality enhancement.
This section, so far, has identified the key aspects of the internal
market domain, including: the importance of the internal service
culture; the notion of the internal customer; the impact of employee
satisfaction and behaviour on customer satisfaction and retention
and the value of long-term employees. The next part to this section
will now consider the scope of internal marketing.
The scope of internal marketing
There have been many different approaches to internal marketing
activities advocated by academics and practitioners alike. The fol-
lowing is a brief discussion of the major themes that have emerged
in the literature in recent years and some of the problems in imple-
menting internal marketing.
316 Relationship Marketing