ABSTRACT
Internal marketing, or the use of marketing techniques within the organisation to create and communicate corporate values, is an essential part of a marketing orientation. Kohli and Jaworski (1990) define a marketing orientation as an emphasis on the generation of marketing intelligence, and its dissemination across departments, together with an organisation-wide response to it. Empirical evidence suggests that the strength of a firm’s marketing orientation has a positive effect on business performance and impacts on employee commitment and ‘esprit de corps’ ( Jaworski and Kohli, 1993). This approach acknowledges that marketing is an organisational not a departmental function, and that it requires a certain organisational culture for such an approach to be adopted (Deshpande and Webster, 1989; Deshpande et al., 1993; Varey, 1995). The application of internal marketing provides organisations with the potential to achieve a marketing orientation and resulting corporate culture. There is, however, little agreement as to the appropriate marketing tools for use internally.
