A model of internal marketing for building and sustaining a competitive service advantage

A model is presented for a mechanism and process for ensuring that organizational capability for good service is continuously enhanced. The internal marketing concept, in a modified form, is the basis for improving internal working relationships between functional specialists by taking a social process perspective. It is suggested that a macromarketing or societal marketing concept can be adopted to provide a way of thinking about customer‐supplier relationships in the organization as an open system which is not limited by a “market” characterization. In this way the broadened internal marketing concept can contribute to change management to make the organization more flexible and responsive. A number of recommendations are made for operating such a mechanism and process.