In the service industry, human resource is the most vital and important component, because the positive appraisement of the service is usually based on the customer¡¦s orientation of the service provider. Thus, in order to instill employees with a sense of service and with enthusiasm, the organization needs to develop the internal marketing orientation. Additionally, manager should support customer service and demonstrates this ¡§service enthusiasm¡¨ in terms of organizational support. The concept of internal marketing was first reported in the area of service marketing. The initial concept came from the field of external marketing, which is based on the concept of treating employees as customers. The hope was to enhance employees' job satisfaction so as to further develop the sense of customer orientation of the members within the organization. Moreover, employee's customer orientation will influence customer service quality. In this research, author only focused on the front line employees in bank and transformed the concept of internal marketing into more management behaviors. This research uses quantitative research methods to explore the relationship between perception of internal marketing orientation and customer orientation. In empirical studies, the major findings are as follow: 1. author proposed an operational definition of the internal marketing orientation, and developed the scale. 2. author proposed a internal marketing orientation-customer orientation orientation model, which was empirical verified. 3. the relationship between the employee's customer orientation and customer service quality wasn¡¦t verified.

Authors: JoAnna Caster & Dana Linnes Tutor: Setayesh Sattari Title: Internal Branding in Multinational Firms- A Gap Analysis of Internal Stakeholder Perceptions Background: As globalization increases, the topic of internal branding has grown in popularity, particularly as a way for firms to secure a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. The topic is quite new however, and there are many aspects that have not been fully explored, including the influence of internal stakeholder perceptions on a firm’s internal brand and related support activities. Purpose: The purpose of this research study is to 1) identify whether a gap exists between employee and manager perceptions of a firm’s internal brand and internal branding activities and 2) investigate the influence of a firm’s country of origin on those perceptions. Delimitations: The study was limited to only medium and large sized firms that have international operations. Additionally, only internal stakeholders were included in the study and the research was limited to respondent’s perceptions, and not necessarily the actual internal brand and related supporting processes or structures. Method: The research was qualitative and data was collected via 24 in-depth interviews of managerial and non-managerial employees at 10 medium and large sized firms. The data was then analyzed using a pattern-matching technique. Conclusions: Perceptions of both managerial and non-managerial employees did not indicate significant gaps, however there seemed to be an unclear understanding of what an internal brand is and what respondent’s firm’s internal brand represents. Also, the country of origin did not have a significant influence on those perceptions, as most respondents indicated that they perceived their firm’s internal brand as primarily “global.” Keywords: internal branding, internal brand, international marketing, marketing strategy, stakeholder perceptions, internal marketing orientation, human resource management, country of origin