Integrating internal communications, human resource management and marketing concepts into the new internal marketing philosophy

Successful companies attach great importance to human resource management and internal communications, because they are aware of the value of those activities and of strategic advantage they can bring to the organization. They should also realize that it is necessary to live internal marketing philosophy, if they stream to offer quality products and services to both markets: internal and external. The idea of satisfied employees for the benefit of satisfied customers is accepted and developed by both academicians and practitioners, through the concepts of internal marketing, internal communications and human resource management. Consequently, the paper had two objectives: (1) to analyze concepts of internal marketing (IM), internal communications (IC) and human resource management (HRM) parallelly, and define their scopes, overlaps and differences; and (2) to propose a new internal marketing philosophy that combines three before mentioned concepts. The conclusion that emerged after reaching both objectives was that the new internal marketing philosophy should be grounded in a relationship marketing theory. It should not be limited to neither of three functional areas that are commonly connected to it – internal communications, human resource management or marketing. It is for sure that managing internal relationships should not be restricted to any function, and should not apply traditional marketing concepts and tools. That would ruin the nature of internal relationship marketing, and would not encompass all tasks it should fulfill.