The impact of internal marketing on customer experience and the implication for business relationships

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Abstract

Customer experience is attracting increasing attention particularly with a focus on services in consumer markets (Gentile, Spiller & Noci 2007; Tynan and McKechnie 2009; Johnston and Kong, 2011). Customer experience in a business-to-business context attracts less attention (Lemke, Clark and Wilson, 2010) and when it does the focus is generally on customers creating experience rather than the inter-play of both employees and customers creating the experience. This has led to this research pursuing the study of an inter-play of concepts, internal marketing and customer experience, in a business-to-business context. The study addresses the potential impact internal marketing has on customer experience, utilising the employee’s and customer’s experience and the collection of experience in terms of interaction and networking from a direct participation in events. However, findings illustrate the presence of emotional element in customer experience. Concurrently, employee engagement existence has an impact on internal marking and both employees’ and customers’ experiences. This study used a single case study approach to investigate relationship dynamics impacting and surrounding customer experience in a business-to-business services context. The actors involved include internal and external customers and span both the internal and external network. 65 interviews, 4 focus groups and secondary data have been collected in the telecommunications industry in Malaysia. The research aimed to present a greater understanding of how internal marketing impact customer experience and influenced by the dynamics inherent in both internal and external in a business relationship

Keyword(s)

Internal Marketing, Customer Experience, Employee Experience

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