The Impact of Internal Market Orientation on Staff Service Behaviours

The impact of service direction, service training and staff behaviours on perceptions of service delivery are examined. The impact of managerial behaviour in the form of internal market orientation (IMO) on the attitudes of frontline staff towards the firm and its consequent influence on their customer oriented behaviours is also examined. Frontline service staff working in the consumer transport industry were surveyed to provide subjective data about the constructs of interest in this study, and the data were analysed using structural equations modelling employing partial least squares estimation. The data indicate significant relationships between internal market orientation (IMO), the attitudes of the employees to the firm and their consequent behaviour towards customers. Customer orientation, service direction and service training are all identified as antecedents to high levels of service delivery. The study contributes to marketing theory by providing quantitative evidence to support assumptions that internal marketing has an impact on services success. For marketing practitioners, the research findings offer additional information about the management, training and motivation of service staff towards service excellence.

M-technology, Consumption and Gambling: A Conceptualisation of Consumer Vulnerability in an M-gambling Marketplace

Technology imbued m-marketing systems influence the consumptive lives of citizens, by facilitating anytime, anywhere business-to-consumer interactions. Business pundits’ enthusiasm towards mobile services (m-services) has been driven by the promise of a marketspace context involving seamless, business-to-consumer interactions that can be simultaneously impulse-driven, highly entertaining and omnipresent. Arguably, gambling too is impulse-driven, exciting and easily accessible. An important question that needs to be addressed is: how the convergence of mobile technology and gambling will impact the millennial consumer. The authors address this question by examining the contextually bounded interactions between internal and external factors that make mobile phone users potentially vulnerable during m-gambling interactions. By examining key themes that describe the convergence of m-technology and gambling, we clarify the experiential nature of m-gambling and its relationship to consumer vulnerability.