Revisiting the relationship between internal marketing and external marketing: The role of customer orientation

The strands of research performed on internal marketing (IM) and external marketing (EM) effectiveness have grown independently from each other, meaning that the way in which they are linked remains a mystery. Scholars have also pointed out that IM is the missing half of the marketing concept. In other words, scholars have argued that IM is the implementation segment of marketing orientation. This will, to a greater extent, result in the effectiveness of EM. There is currently no clear evidence to show how IM and EM are linked. Thus, this research aims to examine the relationship between the effectiveness of IM and EM with customer orientation being considered the missing link (mediator) between both variables. This research is mainly a hypothetico-deductive design which employ survey questionnaire. The population was large-sized manufacturing organizations which were located in Penang, Malaysia. Judgmental sampling was employed from Federation of Malaysia Manufacturers (FMM) Directory. Snowballing method was also used because some respondents were referred by the initial respondents. The contact persons at the respective entities were contacted either in person or by email. Weekly follow-ups were then made either by email or telephone to ensure that the data collection was progressing well. Out of the 250 individuals who had been provided with sets of questionnaires, a total of 110 (i.e. 44.0%) responded. All measurements items were developed from previous study with some modifications to suit the current research. In summation, the results of this study have shown that IM was found to be significantly related to customer orientation and EM effectiveness. Customer orientation was also found to be significantly related to EM effectiveness. Finally, it has been discovered that customer orientation mediated the relationship between IM and EM effectiveness. The findings of this study support the theoretical model on IM and EM effectiveness (product activities, pricing activities, promotion activities and distribution activities), with customer orientation being the mediator. i.e., customer orientation is the missing link between IM and EM effectiveness (product activities, pricing activities, promotion activities and distribution activities). Based on simple regression, the results have shown that IM is significantly related to product activities, pricing activities, promotion activities and distribution activities respectively. The results explain that IM is the right strategy to apply to large-sized manufacturing organizations. The implementation of IM practices will, furthermore, lead to enhancement of customer orientation and hence effectiveness of product activities, pricing activities, promotion activities and distribution activities.