The Roles of Internal Communications, Human Resource Management and Marketing Concepts in Determining Holistic Internal Marketing Philosophy

The paper analyses the triad of internal marketing (IM), internal communications (IC) and human resource management (HRM) parallely, which was not the prior interest of academics (so far only the dyads of those concepts were analyzed). The scopes, overlaps and differences between the three concepts are analyzed. By combining three before mentioned concepts a holistic internal marketing philosophy is described. The main conclusions are that a holistic internal marketing philosophy is grounded in a relationship marketing theory, that it does not rely solely on traditional marketing concepts and tools, and that it synergizes on three functional areas (IC, HRM and marketing)