Do Business Well

A key role of modern marketing is that of a management `mindset’ implemented throughout an organization rather than confined to a particular department (Payne 1995). This viewpoint regards marketing as a guiding management philosophy or ‘attitude of mind’ that puts the customer first, and it is commonly described s a ‘marketing orientation’. It is a much broader view of the role of marketing an has been envisaged in the past, and it cuts across a wide range of organizational functions. Successful adaptation of a marketing orientation requires effective management of all stakeholder groups (this means people with a particular — although not necessarily the same — interest in the activities of the company) such as staff, business partners, shareholders and suppliers, as well as customers. As Chaffey et al. note, ‘The marketing concept should lie at the heart of the organisation, and the actions of directors, managers and employees should be guided by its philosophy’ (2000: 3).

The Internet supports the concept of the marketing orientation because it provides a powerful interactive communications medium both within the organization (through the use of an intranet) and externally with other key stakeholder groups (through the use of an extranet). The Internet also facilitates the gathering and management of data necessary to formulate and implement marketing strategies.

BT, for example, is using its Intranet to develop a competencies database of employee IT skills, thereby opening up a pool of potential labour for jobs that come up and highlighting training needs. Adopting relationship marketing principles within the organization in this way is known as internal marketing. The basic premise behind internal marketing is that a company’s communications with its customers and other external stakeholders are unlikely to be effective unless employees within the firm are aware of (and — more critically — prepared to ‘buy into’ on an individual basis) the message that the firm is trying to put across. I has been estimated that more than 20 per cent of a firm’s communications are actually with itself rather than with external stakeholders, yet internal communications are rarely accorded the same degree of attention and resources as external communications.

Sometimes, very basic errors are made. For example, if the person responsible for mailing out corporate brochures is not told that a facility for customers to email such requests to the firm has been implemented, incoming messages may well be ignored by that person in the mistaken assumption that someone else is dealing with them. It is currently fashionable to refer to employees as `internal customers‘ . If all employees are clear about the company’s mission, objectives and strategy, then there is a much better chance that customers will get the same message. Research has shown that firms where employees understand organizational goals have considerably higher returns on capital than those where employees feel excluded or uninformed.

While press attention has focused on the achievements (and, more recently, the struggles) of Internet entrepreneurs in dotcom companies, comparatively little mention has been made of the increasing numbers of service workers who make up the bulk of the demand for labour in new technology industries. Leibovich, in an article appropriately entitled ‘Service workers without asmile’, provides an interesting account of employment conditions at Amazon, world famous for its ground-breaking policies of online customer relationship-building. He notes how staff are pressured to work as quickly as possible in order to achieve customer satisfaction targets, particularly those who earn low wages packing books at the firm’s distribution centres or answering emails from customers, and goes on to observe the irony of the Amazon geography: ‘Customer service employees work in a patchwork of cubicles scattered over three downtown Seattle buildings.

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• Managing the Email Marketing List Part 1
• A Lateral Move Can Lead Upward
• Redrawing Electronic Commerce Customers Marketing Organizational Boundaries
• Challenges of building online customer relationships
• Resolving Conflict - the Choices
• Networked organizations: the importance of business partnerships Part 1

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