Internal Marketing (IM): a literature review and research propositions for service excellence

The role of service employees is indeed relevant for the success of any service organization, especially those that process people and internal marketing can help firms to deliver service excellence. Even though it is not a new concept, since it was first mentioned in the literature more than 30 years ago, confusion still exist on what exactly internal marketing (IM) is. This theoretical paper reviews the IM literature and relates it to the service excellence at the same time that presents some research propositions to the development of the knowledge in this marketing area. A desk research methodology was adopted, and data base on international academic journals was accessed for the construction of this article. As a conclusion it was possible to speculate that something has to come before IM application in a company, that is a service orientation. Without that, it is impossible to have a successful IM program. Also, the variety of interpretations as to what IM constitutes did result to a diverse range of activities grouped under the umbrella of IM.