The relationship between internal marketing, market orientation and company performance : a study of Egyptian and western companies operating in Egypt

• Main Author: Elmagd, Ihab Abou
• Published: Southampton Solent University 2008
• Subjects: 381; Business and Management : Marketing
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.490818

Market orientation has been proposed as a major source of achieving sustainable competitive advantage, and also one of marketing's greatest contributions to business strategy. At the same time it is believed that internal marketing is part of the wider concept of market orientation and implies applying marketing-like techniques internally to the organisation in order to foster customer orientation among employees. Empirical evidence for the interconnectedness of internal marketing and market orientation is scant within the literature. Additionally, the impact of both market orientation and internal marketing on the company performance is subject of debate. This study sought to investigate the interconnectedness of internal marketing and market orientation and their impact on company performance. This was done in Egypt as studies of both concepts in Egypt, as in other emerging economies are rare, and provides some interesting results. A questionnaire was designed and after pilot testing, a quantitative survey of 222 Egyptian and western companies in Egypt was carried out. A number of hypotheses were tested and also a number of correlation analyses were carried out. This was followed by 12 qualitative interviews with senior management of Egyptian and western companies. Among the findings of the study were that in general western firms were both more market oriented and internal marketing oriented than Egyptian firms and performed better. Also that there was a positive relationship between market orientation and company performance, as there was between internal marketing and performance and that the two concepts are related. Among the original contributions to knowledge by this study is the finding that the strongest relationship between dimensions of market orientation and overall internal marketing is in terms of inter-functional co-ordination (a dimension of market orientation). The study concludes with a set of recommendations to Egyptian companies to improve their market orientation stances.