CHAPTER ONE                                          

1.0      INTRODUCTION

1.1   BACKGROUND OF STUDY

Internal marketing strategy is a concept that is aimed at driving the internal firms product personified in the employees. Therefore, this concept shares similar ideology with the theory of management by objective, which is aimed at integrating the employees goals and objectives into the firms overall objective to meet a congruency as to achieve the corporate goal and objective. We therefore, argued that without the actualization of the personnel objectives a firm will not achieve its maximum goals, even when it seems the goal is been achieved, the employee will on the other hand devise its own strategy of achievement, which eventually leads to nepotism; fraud; insubordination to the ground norms of the system.

An overview of internal marketing conceptual evolution is provided in other to justify the tacit and explicit support internal marketing has enjoyed in literature over the years. Rafiq and Ahmed (2000) in their observation classified internal marketing development in three separate phases, they are: the employee satisfaction phase; the customer orientation phase; and the strategy implementation or what they otherwise called the change management phase. The early definition of internal marketing through the customer orientation stance was based on a total quality management concept which focused on the firms service delivery process (Perry, 2008). In other words organizations were more interested in producing quality goods for its target markets; rather than concentrating on the personnel’s who man this process. The underlying theory is that effective service delivery requires motivated and customer-conscious employees (Gronroos, 2002).

Berry and Parasuraman (2001) defined internal marketing as viewing employees as internal customers; viewing jobs as internal products that satisfy the needs and wants of these internal customers while addressing the objectives of the firm. This employee satisfaction phase recognizes the complex nature of services marketing and its potential impact on IM in maximizing quality services delivery during buyer-seller interactions.

Rafiq and Ahmed (2000) defined internal marketing as planned effort using a marketing-like approach to overcome organizational resistance to change; align motivate and inter functional co-ordinate as well as integrate employees towards the effective implementation of corporate and functional strategies in order to deliver customer satisfaction through a process of creating motivated and customer oriented employees. Despite the different definitions of the term, it is generally agreed that the firm must engage first in marketing its internal customers (employees) if marketing goals must be achieved on its external customers.

In other words, by fulfilling employee needs, the firm produces certain employee outcomes which would in turn lead to higher satisfaction and loyalty from customers. Self determination theory proposes two types of motivation, extrinsic and intrinsic. Extrinsic motivation refers to behaviors that are performed because of the externally administered rewards that would result from the system. An extrinsically motivated person carries out actions in other to gain material or social benefits (Bateman and Crant, 2005).

Intrinsic motivation refers to motivation that comes from within or from the activity itself. While the intrinsically motivated person carries out actions for its sake and for its own rewards than in the hope of external benefits. Examples of intrinsic factors include interesting work, recognition, growth and achievement (Shadare and Hammed, 2009). Organizational commitment reflects a psychological bond that an individual identifies with an organization (Joo, 2008). Organizational commitment according to Malhotra and Mukherjee (2003) quoting Greenberg and Baron(2007) state that organizational commitment is the extent to which an individual identifies and is involved with his or her organization and/or is willing to leave it.

Organizational commitment reflects the attitudes of the firm’s towards its employees (Malhotra and Mukherjee, 2003). Mowday, Steers and Porter (2002) identified three characteristics of organizational commitment: (a) a strong belief in and acceptance of the organization’s goals and values; (b) a willingness to exert considerable effort on behalf of the organization and; and (c) a strong desire to maintain membership in the organization. While employee performance is the measure of employees input in relation to his output aimed at meeting the firms overall goals and objectives.

Ivancevich and Matteson (2006) suggest that work performance is a function of three variables which includes: knowledge and skills; motivation and workload and tools and climate. Therefore an employee with the right knowledge and skills, who is motivated and has a work load that, is in congruence with his/her skills, and has the right tools as well as good organizational climate would perform well on the job. This view was supported by Cummings and Schwab (2003) who suggest that employee performance is a function of the influence of environmental variables via their influence on performance determinants like motivation and ability.

Employee work performance can therefore be said to be a product of two basic factors: employee competence and organizational factors Greene et al (2004). Therefore the purpose of this paper is to empirically validate the relationship between internal marketing orientation and affective organizational commitment on employees’ performance in the Nigerian aviation sector.