Internal marketing

Services depend on service employees to interact with consumers in order to deliver the end-product. It has been found that 81.2% of service firms believe that the personnel/customer communication that emerges in the provision of the service is an important aspect of the product. There are two possible approaches to managing this complex point-of-sale interface. One takes the view that such personal interaction should be minimised, either by industrialisation or decoupling, and hence made less complex, whereas another considers that ‘people will remain service's essential ingredient for the relevant future’ (Sasser W.E. and Arbeit S., 1976, Selling jobs in the service sector, Business Horizons, June, pp. 61–65). This viewpoint necessitates an approach to the consumer/personnel exchange that is proactive and positive. Conventionally, marketing focuses on achieving ‘desired exchange outcomes with target markets’ from the consumer's point of view. This paper argues that in service industries satisfactory exchange outcomes must exist for the service providers too, and that marketing can be applied to the workforce as well as to consumers.