Huffman Trucking is anxious to go beyond its record of steady growth to pull ahead of its competition and CEO Phil Huffman wants to accomplish this goal through the establishment of an internal marketing culture. Internal marketing, per George and Gronroos (1989), is "the implementation of a human resource management philosophy based on a marketing perspective" (Suter, 1995, p. 1). The value of an internal marketing culture is that it increases an organization's motivation for "service-mindedness" by making employees conversant with the same issues and features that are being used to market to customers (Suter, 1995, p. 1). Internal marketing enables a company to "[take] advantage of opportunities to positively influence customer perception," recognizing that with every call that is taken and every customer that is spoken to, the company can leave the customer with a "positive impression of [its] value in business terms" (Bruno, 2007, p. 1). An internal marketing culture ensures that the entire organization, from top to bottom, becomes a tool for delivering excellent customer service. The customer and his or her satisfaction becomes the focus of the company, and the company "seeks to fulfill the needs and wants of each individual customer" (Sheth, Shisodia, & Sharma, 2000, p. 55). This customer-centric orientation is vital, as unless the company's employees have the "attitude, skills, and commitment needed to meet customer expectations and sustain customer loyalty," efforts to market to consumers externally are doomed to fail (Kerin, Hartley, Berkowitz, & Rudelius, 2006, Chap. 12, p. 48).
Phil Huffman has a number of alternatives to choose from in implementing a more customer-centric organization with an internal marketing culture. Focusing on the issues of customer centricity, internal marketing, uniqueness of services, and relationship marketing, Huffman can decide to obtain customer feedback and conduct...