Internal marketing and the moderating role of employees: An exploratory study

Abstract

Drawing on evidence from the health service sector, this study focuses on the concept of internal marketing and how it affects internal customer satisfaction. The literature review provides the basis for synthesising human resource management, the learning organisation paradigm and Bitner's servicescape framework, in order to introduce and empirically test an instrument for measuring internal marketing. The sample consists of 478 medical staff members (medical, nursing and administrative staff) from nine different hospitals, in an attempt to investigate multiple service roles with respect to different aspects of internal marketing orientation. The results support the proposed model and emphasise the moderating aspect of service roles.

Keywords:

• internal marketing
• servicescape
• employee satisfaction
• learning organisation
• HRM
• health sector