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This paper reports on the impact of perceived resource adequacy (PRA) and competence (PRC) on new service development (NSD) teams’ internal performance (IP). This study aims to explore the indirect effect of internal market orientation (IMO) adoption, as a dynamic capability, on both PRA and PRC through the shaping of the emerging dynamics within NSD teams.

Using a hierarchical research design, the authors use a meso-theory approach to test a path-analytic framework against 116 NSD managers (offering data at the macro- or organisational level) and 543 NSD team members (offering data at the micro- or team level).

Both PRA and PRC are important in explaining NSD teams’ IP at the organisational level, though their explanatory power varies. The adoption of IMO is also an important antecedent to this factor through the (indirect) effect on the team climate and degree of integration.

IMO is an important dynamic capability that allows management to transform the mindset of employees, even if they do not directly interact with customers. In NSD efforts, this reflects on the team’s perceptions of the adequacy of the resources they have to deliver the project through the managerial interventions at the team level, which (mainly) explains the team’s IP.

Adopting an IMO allows the development of a dynamic capability that carries wider benefits for the service organisation, as this has positive implications not just for frontline employees. Specifically, NSD efforts are likely to become more resource-efficient as a result of IMO adoption because of the interventions of management during the development effort.

This empirical study is the first to test the impact of IMO adoption as a dynamic capability and in a context other than frontline employees from a meso-theory perspective. This allows considering the different effects at the appropriate levels (macro and micro), thus enabling a more accurate definition of the mechanism through which companies benefit from IMO adoption.

This study aims to explore how the adoption of internal market orientation (IMO) can enhance front-line employee brand enactment within an interpersonal service setting. Insights from equity theory and the person – environment paradigm are drawn upon to develop a theoretical model describing the impact of IMO on employee – organization fit, employee – supervisor fit and employee – job fit and the consequences of IMO on employee brand knowledge and brand identification. Second, the role of various types of fit and brand knowledge/identification for front-line employee brand enactment is confirmed.

This study draws from service employees in a high-contact customer setting.

Results uncover two mechanisms for successful internal branding: increasing employee fit with the service environment and enhancing employee brand knowledge.

The study contributes to practice in that the findings outline a realistic understanding of how managerial actions facilitate employees’ alignment with the firm’s brand promise within the realm of the broader organizational context in which service delivery takes place.

The present study contributes in the extant literature as it enables a more holistic view of the drivers of brand-congruent behaviors among front-line employees. Moreover, it has a significant contribution for future researchers as it lays the ground to further examine how employees’ perceptions of internal marketing strategies shape their fit levels with different aspects of their working environment which also affect the internal branding efforts of service organizations.

Drawing on Resource-based Theory, the purpose of this paper is to empirically examine the effect of International Strategic Brand Management (SBM) on export performance within the Business-to-Business (B2B) context. To be able to purposely assess the relationship, this paper also sets out to discover what antecedent international resources, (financial resources) and international capabilities (market information, branding and marketing planning) contribute to the ability of B2B exporters to effectively manage their brands abroad.

A mixed method firm-level approach was employed. First, a qualitative study of 34 in-depth interviews explored the focal inter-relationships and constructs identified within the literature. A survey of 208 successful UK exporters was then conducted and the results were analysed using structured equation modelling.

The results confirm that certain marketing capabilities (branding and marketing planning) are advantageous antecedents to the employment of effective SBM in foreign markets which, in turn, leads to increased financial and market performance internationally.

This paper outlines practical brand management considerations managers need to account for to achieve effective exporting. Practitioners are advised to prioritise the development of robust international branding and marketing planning capabilities which can enable them to exploit their limited financial resources for optimal benefits. Furthermore, by developing these capabilities, firms can focus on the essence of their brand and communicate their brand image through the effective strategic management of their brand to business customers, evoking positive brand associations, enhanced perceived brand value and the achievement of increased export performance.

This paper is the first to focus on international SBM as the deterministic factor leading to improved B2B export performance. An innovative framework is offered which positions the pivotal role of International SBM as the central focus. The construct for international branding capabilities is extended specifically for use in the B2B domain.

Service employees are reported to influence negatively the development of a market orientation hindering thus the service company's effort to become more customer centric. A way to overcome this barrier is the implementation of internal marketing (IM) programs. However, the extant literature reports that the number of companies practicing marketing internally is disproportionate small compared to the number of companies trying to adopt the market orientation concept. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to offer a preliminary insight regarding the antecedents of practicing marketing internally.

To do this, data were collected from 583 first‐line personnel from 29 five and four stars hotels in Greece through personal interviews in order to investigate the impact of company culture and internal‐market orientation (IMO) as antecedents of IM and investigate the effect that the company's culture, IMO and IM have on employee's job satisfaction at the individual's level.

The analysis involved multilevel SEM and demonstrates that the company's culture influences the adoption of the IMO concept, which in turn is an important antecedent to the implementation of IM programs. Moreover, employee's job satisfaction level is directly conditioned by the degree to which the company has adopted the IMO concept and practices IM, although the effect of the former is significantly stronger than the latter.

Various directions for future research open from this study, which address the limitations of this study while facilitating further understanding of how the adoption of the IMO concept can complement the company's espousal of marketing philosophy. For instance, although assessing the impact of the IMO concept adoption and IM practice on the adoption of a market orientation and on customer satisfaction is beyond the scope of the present study, future research towards this direction through an integrated conceptual framework would be particularly helpful and welcome.

The practical implication from this paper is that IM programs, in order to be effective, require that the company is willing to invest in adjusting its culture and also in adopting the IMO concept, which translates to investing in understanding what the employee's value, developing bidirectional communication channels and becoming responsive to the needs of its employees.

This is the first study addressing the role of company culture and IMO adoption as antecedents of IM programs. Hence, it makes a contribution for both scholars and practitioners alike since the former derive a more comprehensive framework of studying further the practice of marketing internally while the latter obtain a more pragmatic picture of the actions required prior to launching an IM program.

The aim of the present study is to theoretically elaborate the Service Blueprinting (SB) effectiveness concept and integrate it within a conceptual framework, with specific antecedents and the moderating role of two major service characteristics: complexity and divergence.

In order to validate the theoretical framework, a field study in 102 hotels was conducted, with the use of a structured questionnaire.

The results validate the research instrument used to capture SB effectiveness and indicate market orientation, service climate and service design formality as its three major antecedents. Moreover the degree of complexity and divergence of the service process were found to positively moderate the aforementioned relationships.

The study's limitations rely on the business and national context as long as the lack of distinction between newly developed services and service modifications. Also, further research should also integrate the influence that SB effectiveness has on a service provider's organizational function and customers’ perceptions on service quality.

The study provides a useful guide on how a service blueprint should be designed and also the different approaches that should be taken into consideration according to the type of service that is mapped.

The effectiveness of the SB process is conceptualized for the first time and explored in a quantitative research. Also, for the first time, specific organizational factors are indicated as major antecedents of SB effectiveness and two service characteristics are found to moderate these influences.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of front line employee job satisfaction in customers ' behavioral intentions.

Research design is nested with data collected from both first line employees and customers. Data are collected from multiple branches of a single bank to eliminate the possibility of other parameters such as design of operations and physical evidence from masking the true effects of the variables under investigation.

Employee job satisfaction influences a customer ' s perception of quality, customer satisfaction and the development of high relational switching cost. Hence the effect on repurchase intention is indirect but significant and strong while moderated by branch size and age of the employee.

The degree of employee job satisfaction is a resource of strategic nature for these companies aiming to improve customer retention rates. Such companies should protect their ability to build employee job satisfaction and restrain themselves from policies that threaten to slim down the satisfaction their employees derive from their job.

Using a hierarchical research design, this is the first study that manages to establish the relationship between employee job satisfaction and customers ' behavioral intentions while eliminating the effect of complementary marketing mix parameters such as operations design effectiveness and aesthetics.

The purpose of this paper is to integrate the fit theory and the equity theory in order to stress the importance of retail supervisor's IMO adoption for enhancing contact employees' fit with their environment and for shaping positive employee extra-role behaviours towards their firm and their supervisor.

A hierarchical research design is employed with evidence from 89 from retail store supervisors through personal interviews and 417 contact employees.

This study contributes by suggesting IMO as a mechanism which can raise employees' fit with their organization and their supervisor. Another finding of this study lies on the role of IMO for positive employee-outcomes such as higher patronage and motivation to report service complaints.

Additional research is necessary to identify whether different individual characteristics and background influence employees' fit with their organization or their supervisor. The results presented in this study clearly suggest an important first step in understanding the importance of IMO adoption for employees' better fit with their environment.

Considering that supervisor's level of IMO accounts for a significant portion of contact employees' IMO adoption, it is imperative that top management must first sell the organization itself especially to middle level managers before implementing an internal marketing program across the whole firm. As IMO increases employees' fit with their environment, this paper departs from the view that managers can mainly achieve “fit” into their organization and avoid misfit only by carefully attracting and selecting individuals. moreover, managers should take into account that IMO increases employees' willingness to report service complaints to their supervisor.

This study is intended to be a key step in bringing internal marketing and fit research together while also formally including IMO into multilevel marketing research and providing an important shift for extant research by discussing how interpersonal interactions between different organizational groups shape IMO adoption. From a theoretical view, the paper extends fit theory by establishing IMO implementation as a key strategy for recovering or increasing employees' fit with their environment.

Although many authors argue that practising marketing internally facilitates the implementation of the market orientation concept, systematic empirical research to explore the validity of the argument remains surprisingly scarce. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to investigate empirically the relationship between market orientation (MO) and internal‐market orientation (IMO) as well as their joint effect on customer satisfaction.

The findings ground on data collected from dyads of financial services providers and their customers. The former provided the information pertaining to the company's degree of MO and IMO adoption as well as on perceived employee value, while the latter were asked about perceived customer value, perceived service quality and their satisfaction with their provider. In total 127 dyads are employed in the analysis.

The findings show that MO and IMO are two inter‐related concepts, probably falling under the marketing philosophy umbrella. Through MO adoption, customer perceived value and customer perceived quality of the service increase. Through IMO adoption, the company improves the level of employee perceived value, which also results in higher levels of customer perceived service quality. Interestingly enough, IMO adoption is also found to have a direct impact on customer perceived service quality.

The major implication from the study is that adopting a market orientation does help improve customer satisfaction but this objective is better served when developing a more holistic view of marketing and trying to simultaneously offer value to other company stakeholders, such as the employees. The major limitation of the study is the focus on services. When it comes to manufactured goods, customers receive significant value from the tangible parts of the product and consequently further investigation is required before any generalization can be made on the basis of the strength of the relationships that this study reveals.

The most significant implication for practitioners is the need to strike the right balance between the company's internal and external orientation. To achieve this, companies have to invest in integrating the marketing and the human resource functions, in much the same manner in which they attempt to integrate marketing with other company functions that also influence customers' experiences.

This is the first empirical study to investigate the inter‐relationship and the joint effect of two well established notions, i.e. that between MO and IMO, and thus offers the required support to normative arguments regarding the need to sustain a balance between the company's external and internal focus.