Investigation of the impact of internal marketing activities on internal customer satisfaction in the banking sector: The case of Yalova province

In recent years, internal marketing has started to find more place in the business world and academic literature. Competition has become a reality for businesses in the contemporary world, and it pushes businesses to make many efforts to get ahead in this race. One of these efforts is to carry out internal marketing activities to increase the satisfaction levels of its employees and it provides a great competitive advantage to the businesses. Most of the services have to be marketed simultaneously at the same place which it is served. In other words, most of the time, services cannot be considered independent of the person who is providing it. For this reason, the success and continuity of companies depend on ensuring internal customer satisfaction. Therefore, providing internal customer satisfaction through internal marketing activities will directly benefit businesses. In this study conducted on bank employees, general information about marketing, service and banking concepts were given, past researches about internal marketing and internal customer satisfaction were discussed, the internal marketing studies of banks were examined and the factors affecting internal customer satisfaction were explained. The relationship between internal marketing and internal customer satisfaction was investigated in the sample of Yalova province. The aim of this study is to determine whether there is a relationship between internal marketing and internal customer satisfaction and to investigate whether internal marketing has an impact on internal customer satisfaction. In this direction, all 329 bank employees in Yalova province were reached by using questionnaire method. 225 questionnaires returned from 329 questionnaires distributed. These 225 questionnaires were evaluated by statistical analysis methods. Data were analyzed with SPSS 22 program and 95% confidence level was used. According to the findings of the research; it was determined that there is relationship between the internal customer satisfaction and internal marketing. It was concluded that the effect of internal marketing on internal customer satisfaction varies according to the sub-dimensions of the scales. Accordingly, development and vision affect both internal satisfaction and external satisfaction positively but no effect was observed from rewarding sub-dimension on internal customer satisfaction. In the light of these results, the study is expected to contribute to the academic literature, the business world and especially the banking sector.