Study On The Management Of Different Demands Among The Internal Customers Of Enterprise

The study of customer demand makes the core part of marketing theory. According to marketing theory, customers are individuals or organizations which belong to the external factor of marketing subject; the purpose of marketing action is to satisfy the demand of customers adequately and fulfill the target of marketing subject. The demand of customers could be met in resorts to the combination of entire product-design, pricing, promotion and distribution. The management process of satisfying customers'demand will be undertaken in three gradual stages: recognizing demand, selecting target markets corresponding to the potential and goals of the enterprises, setting down and implementing the strategies of marketing management and their combinations.The above-mentioned marketing theory in the perspective of customer demanding, originated from the background of industrial economic society. With the emergence of post-industrial economic society's characteristics, the subject of social economy is becoming multiply diversified; service industries tend to have an increasing proportion in social economic structure; the focus on marketing subject begin to expand during the shift; marketers start to conduct multiple-level exchanges to satisfy external customer's varied demands, and meanwhile pay more attention to their marketing relationships and cooperation with supplier's and dealer's, internal management among staff , government, media, financial organization, stockholders and social groups which have related interest, breaking through the constraints of marketing 4P model's in the hope of exploring more flexible tools of marketing management. Marketing theory setting itself in the new economic and social background, has made a bigger leap succeeding to the enrichment of social marketing action. In the august of the year 2004 on the summer seminar of AMA (American Marketing Association) attend anted by marketing faculty, AMA renewed the official definition of marketing:"Marketing is an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating, and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders", Which extends the range of marketing targets to organizations with related interests and also redefines the management tool required to meet marketing target as the process of creating, spreading and conveying customers'values. It also provides clues for marketing theory researchers on how to establish, develop and manage marketing relationship with internal customers of the enterprise and other marketing targets.The theory of internal marketing regard its internal members as customers who take a certain percentage of demand; with basic marketing concepts and the primary aim to realize its organizational goals to effectively conduct the marketing management among its internal members by means of creating, spreading, and conveying customer values. The study of internal customers'demand and management of their demand has pioneered a new research for marketing theory during the recent 20 years. After consulting and analyzing related literatures, we found that there is still a large scope waiting for study within this field and many problems call for further discussions. This paper, from the perspective of demanding management and the definition of internal customers, intends to reinforce the exact statement of the demanding subjects of internal customers and then make further explanations on the content and hierarchy of internal customer demand and management approaches which might be carried out to satisfy their demand.Prior to the management of customer demand, is to identify the demanding subjects. Only after that could key-to-the-point approaches of marketing management be made so as to meet their need. Early studies on such theories believed that the frontline staffs, who contact with customers in the functional department, are the targets of internal marketing, namely internal customer as we call. However, other scholars argue that the members who serve the frontline staff belong to another functional department should be taken as internal customers. Later research suggests that managers of all levels and all institutions are also the internal marketing target and should accept enterprise's marketing orientation and marketing program. Basing on the related research achievement of previous scholars and combined with the vertical analysis on customer theory, this paper redefines all internal managers and staff who have demand as internal customer subjects.Specific management programs should be set up in accordance with the demanding difference of various Customers demand. Identifying internal customer's diversified need is the precondition of specific management of internal customer demanding discrepancies. Present research outcome are just borrowing some perspectives from Maslow's five hierarchies of needs on the identification of demanding levels or just identifying simply from material and nonmaterial level. The divisions of such a dimension of material and nonmaterial level are well reflected through the form of demanding exchange. The dimension of the five levels embodies its variety and level attribute. Neither of them could represent the supply and demand exchange relationship and subject of internal customer need. Therefore, it could not provide sufficient evidence for demanding management. This paper, starting from the introduction to previous literature and basing itself on social exchange theory, suggests that internal customers have double dimensional characteristics about individual return and relation cooperation, and then with inductive method, have found two main factors that affect internal customer demand differences, namely individual characteristics and enterprise internal environment characteristics. With this point, it proves that enterprise's internal customer demand differs at two dimensions by the way of questionnaire.Internal customers are greatly different from external customers on demand content, exchange relationship and subject, the management as well. Present literatures about internal customer demand management still confined to the level of imitating 4P model, have not combined with internal customer demand characteristics to design specific marketing management tools from the marketing concept of customer value creation and transport. This paper will give an induction about others study, with the support of customer value theory and relationship marketing theory, starting from basic thoughts of demanding management, and hold that"similar marketing"mode which could satisfy and increase internal customer demanding interests are the combination of enterprise's institution and relationship management, simply consisting of organizational institution, training mechanism, communication mechanism, organization culture, cooperation trust, join-in-management, and then use questionnaire to testify that the perceptive choice of enterprise's internal customer to this six demanding management tool.The management of internal customer demand requires not only static diversified management, but also dynamic management. The dynamic change of demand means that compared with enterprise's goals of a given stage and its potential to meet the need, customer demand may have one of the following eight characteristics: minus demand, zero demand, potential demand, decline demand, irregular demand, adequacy demand, excessive demand and harmful demand. Enterprises need to use marketing-combination program to change irregular need, motivate and promote minus need, zero need and potential need, decrease and avoid some excessive need and harmful need. According to specific characteristics of its developing stage and ownership and management conditions, different enterprises have different targets and capabilities of internal customer demand. This paper demonstrates the above-mentioned view through empirical research, and concludes that enterprise's internal customers have reasonable demand, excessive need and insufficient need, compared with empirical results. According to basic customer demand management theory, diversified management of customer demand and state management are merged in the dynamic process of demand management, and thus enterprise need to recognize various kinds of demand, arrange"similar marketing"combined plan, decrease certain internal customer's certain excessive need, guide insufficient need, satisfy reasonable need, and follow the change of enterprise's characteristics, adjust the identification to internal customer's need and its state, redesign and carry out"similar marketing"plan so as to complete the dynamic process of internal customer demand management.This paper has explored the boundary of internal customer, the identification of internal customer and the management of its demand. With these studies, the demand of internal customer subject become clearer, and then the connotation of internal customer subject is extended to the whole enterprise which greatly enlarges the internal customer theory's research and space of its application, thus making up for the in vacant role of the management resulted by the fact that enterprise or enterprise's institutions are considered as internal customers, and greatly improving the feasibility of internal marketing theory.The double-dimensional framework of internal customer identification established in this paper, also provides an operable basis for the implementation of internal customer demand management. The"similar marketing"tool used to manage internal customer demand in this paper, not simply copying the 4P model which satisfies external customer need, but basing on customer value theory and relationship marketing theory and combined with the demand characteristics of internal customers, has set up two catalogues, six specific means and types of combination which greatly widens the thinking mode of further study on management tool for the internal marketing theory. The internal customer demand management process model clearly presents the content and steps of the internal customer demanding management and provides a theoretical basis for enterprise to apply internal marketing theory, to identify and satisfy internal customer need.More detailed study concerning enterprise's internal customer demand and its demanding management are expected. Future research need to have a further segment and empirical analysis toward the state of internal customer demand and discuss the management value of"similar marketing"tool from the perspective of internal customer value so that the essence of marketing theory could be fully presented in the theoretical research and application of internal marketing.