A subject of constant deliberations and interest, the concept of internal marketing was proposed as an answer to the problem of delivering high service quality always. Viewing the employees also as valued customers is central to the idea of internal marketing. Though there has been extensive research on the subject, practical implementation is still in its infancy stage. The paper is an attempt to study the broadened concept and constructs of internal marketing.

In today's dynamic scenario, organizations are investing mammoth amount of time in understanding the needs, wants and demands of their customers. Marketers are generally so busy focusing and communicating with their external customers that they often undermine the importance of their most valued assetemployees of the organization. If managed properly, the employees can become the core competency and thus provide a competitive edge to the firm. The marketing tools used to attract external customers can also serve to attract and retain the employees, a company's internal customers. The art of motivating the employees (internal customers) to change their behavior to achieve organizational goals is termed as `Internal Marketing'. The concept of `Internal Marketing' was introduced to ensure that everyone within the organization, not only understands the mission and vision of the organization, but also understand its role to achieve the same. It strives to fulfill the fundamental role of ensuring the organization's success. It consists of an effort by the organization to train and motivate its employees to provide better services. A trained and motivated employee enhances the company's ability to optimize its resources and helps the organization to convert its strengths into opportunities, thereby helping the company to reap healthy revenues.

Drawing its roots from services marketing, internal marketing seems to have made a place for itself in all successful and sustainable organizations. The term `Internal Marketing' was first used by Berry et al. The term came under the spoke of common deliberations after Leonard Berry's article where he viewed employees as internal customers and jobs as internal products that satisfy the needs and wants of these internal customers while addressing the objectives of the organizations. Viewing jobs as internal products, he offered various combinations of price, place and promotion for the product`job', to build its desirability. Experts, like Thomas (1978); Gronroos (1990); Kotler (2000), also proposed a conceptual framework of services marketing known as the `Service Triangle' to incorporate the concepts of Internal Marketing, External Marketing and Interactive Marketing (Refer to Exhibit 1). The concept emphasized that the organization must first be able to convince or market its concept to its own employees and enable them to deliver the service to the customers. For this, it is important to identify with and fulfill the internal customer's needs. Internal marketing is, thus, a key to fulfilling the promises made to external customers with the help of internal customers (interactive marketing).

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