An Examination of Stakeholder Perspective

The service industry and business-to-business companies have remained at the forefront of studies into internal marketing due to the close contact between employees and customers in such companies. Marketers and industry experts have shown particular interest to the supermarket sector over the past years due to the varied fluctuations in performance that have been reported. Consumers have negligible switching costs and the threat of substitute products is high, with little product differentiation. Therefore, there is the opportunity to create sustainable competitive advantage through intangible offerings. As of yet, there is little evidence supporting benefits of internal market orientation in the food retail industry. One reason for this may be the difficulty of measuring its benefits in such a context. Although the UK food retail industry has been extensively researched, researchers are yet to address it properly in regard to internal market orientation. This chapter examines it from a stakeholder perspective.