An Empirical Investigation of the Impact of Commitment and Trust on Internal Marketing

Abstract

This paper seeks to explore the impact of commitment and trust on internal marketing effectiveness within the hospital industry. This study was exploratory in nature and was conducted using the case study methodology; involving ten cases in the hospital industry with a total of 20 interviews being conducted. Results revealed that both commitment and trust played a moderating role to five of the key tasks (i.e. training, motivation, company vision/goals, co-optation and communication) of effective internal marketing.KEYWORDS: Internal marketing, relationship marketing, commitment, trust, services marketing, service quality 2 INTRODUCTIONServices play a major role in the world's established economies and are increasingly important in developing economies. In today's increasingly dynamic, deregulated, technologically enhanced and unpredictable business environments, services organizations seek to develop competitive advantage through the delivery of consistently high service quality, to improve customer satisfaction. In order to achieve high level of service quality, Berry, Hensel, and Burke (1976) had some 30 years ago proposed and highlighted the importance and significant contribution of internal marketing in this aspect. For this reason, many hospitals and healthcare service providers nowadays seek to explore ways in which they can better engage and capitalize internal marketing to enhance the service quality provided to their customers/patients (Berkowitz, 2011;Cooper & Cronin, 2000;Peltier, Pointer, & Schibrowsky, 2008).Despite the extensive literature on internal marketing (e.g. Ballantyne, 2003;Greene, Walls, & Schrest, 1994;Grönroos, 1994;Rafiq & Ahmed, 2000), there is an apparent lack of research into the importance of commitment and trust on internal marketing and specifically within the hospital industry. Therefore, this paper aims to investigate the impact of commitment and trust on internal marketing. This study draws from both the theory and the preliminary empirical knowledge acquired from interviewing stakeholders who are directly involved in internal marketing at hospitals in Taiwan and Singapore. Hence, this exploratory research will seek to address the question 'What are the impact of commitment and trust on internal marketing effectiveness? Why?'. The research findings seek to contribute towards the internal marketing theory, specifically in the hospital context by exploring new insights and also with the confirmation or disconfirmation of the impact of commitment and trust as identified in the literature. In addition, the findings can also provide 3 practical contributions that are beneficial to hospital managers where their competitiveness in the industry can be further enhanced through the development of effective internal marketing that help to deliver consistently high service quality in improving customer satisfaction. This paper begins by reviewing the literature relevant to the research issue and then discusses the methodology used in investigating this issue. Next the research ...

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