Balancing internal and external market orientations

In his ‘Marketing Myopia’ Levitt (1960) argued against the product centred view of the firm and for the marketing view of the firm, suggesting that businesses must be viewed as customer satisfying processes. This view has endured for nearly forty years despite changes in the service requirements of today’s markets. In the current market environment such a narrow focus on customers satisfaction is increasingly being challenged. This article reviews the literature relating to services marketing, market orientation and internal marketing and develops the concept of an internal orientation suitable for today’s service markets where managers have to compete for scarce resources, both in the internal market and the external market. A conceptual model is presented which balances an internal market orientation and an external market orientation and directions for future research into this concept are discussed.