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Higher education institutions, particularly in the case of public universities, face the challenge of creating more value in an environment of increasing requirements and limitations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the relation of internal marketing (IM) with employees’ attitudinal outcomes, which aim to stimulate and retain motivated and customer-conscious contact employees.

Survey data of 94 customer-contact employees in a public higher education institution were analysed using partial least squares path modelling to explore and predict key target constructs.

The results demonstrate the relationship between customer-contact employees’ service empathy (SE), institutional IM initiatives and employees’ attitudinal outcomes in the public sector, specifically higher education institutions.

The current study relies on self-reported data and a small sample of customer-contact employees working only on enrolment-related areas. Further studies should be designed for theory confirmation and generalizability of the results.

Top managers in public higher education institutions must encourage organizational identification through IM initiatives, such as well-established internal communication procedures. Academic management should continuously train and retain customer-contact employees that have developed SE and a sense of belonging to the organization. SE must be incorporated in the job descriptions and training of customer-contact employees.

The study contributes to the limited literature on the use of IM and SE in the public sector, specifically higher education institutions.

Las instituciones de educación superior, en particular en el caso de las universidades públicas, se enfrentan al reto de crear más valor en un entorno de necesidades y limitaciones en aumento. El propósito de este estudio es explorar la relación entre el marketing interno y las resultantes actitudes laborales de los empleados. El objetivo del marketing interno es estimular y retener empleados de contacto que estén motivados y sean conscientes de la importancia de los clientes.

Se analizaron datos de 94 empleados de contacto de una institución pública de educación superior utilizando modelos de regresión de cuadrados mínimos parciales para explorar y predecir constructos claves.

Los resultados demuestran la relación entre los siguientes constructos: niveles de empatía de los empleados de contacto, iniciativas institucionales de marketing interno, y las resultantes actitudes de los empleados del sector público, en particular organizaciones en el sector de la educación superior.

El presente estudio se basa en los datos auto informados de una pequeña muestra de empleados de contacto que trabajan sólo en áreas relacionadas con matrícula. Nuevos estudios deberían ser diseñados para la confirmación de la teoría y la generalización de los resultados.

Los altos directivos de las instituciones públicas de educación superior deben fomentar la identificación con la organización a través de iniciativas de marketing interno, tales como procedimientos establecidos de comunicación interna. Los directivos académicos deben continuamente adiestrar y retener a los empleados de contacto que han desarrollado la capacidad de proveer servicios de manera empática y que tienen sentido de pertenencia a la organización. Proveer servicio de manera empática debe ser incorporado en las descripciones de empleo y formación de los empleados de contacto.

El estudio contribuye a la literatura limitada sobre el uso de marketing interno y empatía en los servicios en el sector público, específicamente en las instituciones de educación superior.

Examines the role and importance of customer‐contact personnel in the marketing of a bank′s financial services and the importance of customer service in retail banking. Customer‐contact personnel from suburban branches of an Australian retail bank identified their level of agreement with statements dealing with customer purchase perceptions, customer purchase behaviour, the personal selling of services and their role and importance in the marketing of the bank′s financial services. The results were interesting in that they indicated several key factors that affected service purchase encounters. These factors included the organization′s reputation, the role of the customer‐contact personnel in the service encounter, level of reward given to the customer‐contact personnel for their contribution, the significance of an official sales training programme, word‐of‐mouth communication and the relationship between the salesperson and the customer.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between internal branding (IB) and employees' brand commitment and analyze how transformational leadership (TFL) moderates this relationship.

Data were collected through structured questionnaires from 394 employees in Indian telecommunication sector. The hypotheses and conceptual model were tested by structural equation modeling (SEM), using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS).

The results suggest that employees' brand commitment is higher when organizations implement IB supported by transformational leaders. Results also indicate that impact of IB on affective commitment (AC) and normative commitment (NC) is greater than its impact on continuance commitment (CC).

Consistent with the brand commitment dimensions, the findings present an empirically tested comprehensive and integrative model of IB moderated by TFL. This study provides scholars a deeper understanding of relationship among IB, employee's commitment and TFL. Though multicollinearity is addressed, presence of cross-sectional data is a limitation in the study.

The study would help practicing managers to gain a new perspective to manage their internal brand mechanisms through TFL style by stimulating change among employees and create emotionally committed brand advocates.

This paper suggests an empirically validated framework of IB tested for moderation effect by TFL. It adds value to literature by reinforcing the effect of IB employees' AC and NC, especially among customer contact employees who represent brand during customer service delivery in telecommunication sector.

The competitive nature of the financial services market has placed increased importance on the satisfaction of customer needs. This study considers the customer orientation of the customer contact personnel in four banks. Specifically, the relationships between employee motivation, satisfaction, and role clarity, and customer orientation are assessed. Findings indicate that motivation, satisfaction, and role clarity are all directly related to customer orientation. However, when these variables are considered together, motivation and role clarity appear to have the greatest impact on the customer orientation of employees. In addition, tellers were found to be less satisfied and motivated than other customer contact personnel. Managerial implications based on these findings are also discussed.

Employee learning is imperative in the dynamic service environment; yet, much is still unknown about its strategic importance. The purpose of this paper is to extend the understanding of learning by focusing on the strategic importance of learning goal orientation (LGO) in customer-contact employees in service industries characterized with high customer contact.

This paper adopts the multi-method approach by conducting two studies in the high-contact service sector. Study 1 is a large-scale, multiple-respondent survey that investigates the associations between LGO and its antecedents and performance outcomes. To supplement study 1, study 2 embraces case studies that identify the managerial supportive practices and outcomes of customer-contact employees’ learning behaviors.

The results of study 1 demonstrate that employees’ affective organizational commitment does not yield higher-quality services unless the service employees are learning oriented. The findings of study 1 also indicate that management commitment to service quality has positive effects on both LGO and affective organizational commitment. In study 2, the results reveal the practical methods that managers can employ to effectively promote such activities.

This research offers novel insights into research on learning by showing the strategic importance of LGO to enhancing high-contact service firms’ performance and the practical means of fostering LGO in customer-contact employees.

The authors report the results of two studies that model the antecedents of goal congruence in retail‐service settings. They draw the antecedents from extant research and propose that goal congruence is related to employees' perceptions of morale, leadership support, fairness in reward allocation, and empowerment. They hypothesize and test direct and indirect relationships between these constructs and goal congruence. Results of structural equations modeling suggest an important mediating role for morale and interesting areas of variation across retail and service settings.

Considers the need to select customer contact personnel who already exhibit the desirable trait of adaptability, thus reducing the need for training. Discusses the issue of adaptability in service employees and how to select for adaptability. Examines several methods which can be used in the selection process, such as abstract questioning, situational vignette interviewing, role playing. Concludes that whiletraining is vital for all employees, creative interviewing techniques can help to secure service‐oriented employees who represent the most potential for service businesses.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the potential mediators that operate in the black box between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and employee outcomes.

The relationships the authors developed were assessed via data obtained from a time-lagged sample of customer-contact employees and their direct supervisors in the Romanian hotel industry. The study employed bias-corrected bootstrapping analysis to gauge the mediating effects.

The findings reveal that psychological capital mediates the impact of HPWS on work engagement. As hypothesized, both psychological capital and work engagement mediate the impact of HPWS on quitting intentions, creative performance and extra-role performance. In short, the findings underscore both psychological capital and work engagement as the two mediators that operate in the black box between HPWS and the aforesaid employee outcomes. In addition, the empirical data support the impact of work engagement in the intermediate linkage between psychological capital and these outcomes.

The study enhances current knowledge on HPWS by examining the potential mediators between HPWS and motivational outcomes and job outcomes.

An extensive review of literature was conducted to see if there was evidence indicating there are differences in the management of hospitality organizations and manufacturing organizations. The literature was divided into three areas: organizing, staffing, and commanding. The results of the review indicate that there are a number of differences between managing a manufacturing firm and a hospitality firm. The review serves as a foundation for managers and researchers to better understand the unique challenges of managing hospitality organizations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine empirically the dimension of personal touch and its elements of individual attention, helpfulness, courtesy, and promptness as determinants of customer satisfaction for passenger airlines.

Survey data from 437 individuals and a hierarchical approach to structural equation modeling are used to systematically evaluate four alternative measurement models. A second‐order measurement model of personal touch appeared to represent the data very well and can be supported from a theoretical point of view.

Personal touch is found to statistically and substantively affect passenger satisfaction explaining about 54 percent of the variance. In other words, collectively, individual attention, helpfulness, courtesy, and promptness are found to have a significant effect on airline passenger satisfaction.

This research examines the satisfaction of customers of US passenger airlines. Future research should overcome this limitation by extending the survey to include experiences on international flights and with non‐US airlines. The results are biased more towards the responses of “younger” passengers and those who flew primarily in the economy level of service.

The findings of this research have important strategic and managerial implications for passenger airlines and serve to validate the corporate culture and customer service quality driven models of exemplary airlines such Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, and Scandinavian Air Systems.

The paper provides a very thorough review of the literature and is the first to examine empirically the affect of personal touch displayed by contact employees on the satisfaction of customers of passenger airlines.