The effect of internal marketing factors on the quality of services of medical centers of social security organization of Alborz province

Academic thesis for obtaining a master's degree

Department: Business Management Orientation:  Internal Business

Abstract

Organizations currently operate in a dynamic and confusing environment. One of the most obvious features of the current era is the continuous and dramatic changes that occur in their social, cultural, political, economic and technological conditions. The main issue in service organizations is to retain current customers and attract new customers by providing good quality services, which is one of the basic strategies of organizations for survival. This research has been carried out under the title of the effect of internal marketing factors on the quality of health care services of the Social Security Organization of Alborz province, and its main goal is to develop awareness of internal and external customers, and in this regard, it is possible to study and determine the relationship between the quality of health care services and the satisfaction of employees and customers. The research method is based on the descriptive method. (field and library) and tools (observation and test-questionnaire and interview) have been conducted and tested. Now, the main question is whether internal marketing has an effect on the quality of health care services of Alborz Province Social Security Organization?

Key words: Internal marketing, quality of medical services, job satisfaction of employees, organizational commitment of employees

Introduction

The service economy formed today in many countries of the world is an important part of the gross national product, related to the service sector. With the increase in the number of service organizations and the increasing competition between these organizations, many of them decided to maintain their competitiveness and create a competitive advantage in this competitive arena. Since services are not like tangible goods, they do not have the ability to be maintained and stored, and the provision of services and the desired quality is highly dependent on the employees who provide that service and their interaction with customers, the burden of competitive advantage is placed on the employees of these organizations. Employees are considered the most important asset and capital of an organization. The lack of suitable and good employees in providing goods and services of the organization in today's competitive environment will cause problems for the organization. This is more obvious in service organizations. It can be seen. In this type of organization, employees provide services together with customers, so not only the employees themselves, but also the interactions between employees and customers will play an important role in providing appropriate services. Internal marketing is a concept that can greatly facilitate employees and organizations in achieving their goals.

2.1. Statement of the research problem

Today, organizations operate in a dynamic, ambiguous and changing environment. One of the most obvious features of the present era is the continuous and dramatic changes and developments that occur in social and cultural conditions (such as changes in the way of thinking, ideology, social values), political, economic, technological, and transnational (Kordnaich, 53, 1383-67). Environmental dynamics and increasing competition have led organizations to become more competitive in their activities and to gain the satisfaction of their customers and on the other hand to acquire new customers.

In service organizations, one of the most important factors in maintaining and acquiring new customers is the quality of service. In fact, the main sources of competitive advantage of service organizations are the quality of services and the human resources providing that service. It is essential for the survival of the organization. Grunros [2] (2000) stated that quality includes two dimensions: Technical aspect and functional aspect. Technical quality refers to the tangible aspects of the service and generally what is delivered to customers. Functional quality refers to the intangible aspects of services and how services are delivered. Specifically, functional quality refers to the behavior of employees providing that service and the interaction between employees and customers during the service delivery process. The activities of employees are related to the organization's customers. These activities are a vital factor in developing effective relationships with customers. Therefore, the skills, attitudes and behavior of employees are important in this field, because ultimately people are responsible for providing quality services that customers expect today.

One of the factors that can guide the skills, attitudes and behavior of employees in the direction of providing appropriate and customer-oriented service quality is internal marketing.Internal marketing is an important activity in the development of a customer-oriented organization. The main goal of internal marketing is to develop awareness of internal and external customers and to remove obstacles in the way of valuing service quality and organizational effectiveness (Christopher [3] et al., 1991). Internal marketing considers employees as internal customers and businesses as internal products (Lee and Chin [4], 2005). Internal marketing is focused on proper internal relationships between people at all levels in organizations, so a service-oriented and customer-oriented approach is created between employees in contact with customers. They are considered to be required to comply with laws and regulations and job descriptions. In today's competitive world, the organization will face failure with this type of view of the employees, because the source of the view of the employees, the organization in this era is their human capital (Norton and Kaplan[5], 2014, 46). The main assumption of internal marketing is to look at employees as the most valuable asset of the organization and treat them as internal customers, which leads to the organization gaining a competitive advantage.

In organizations that provide health and treatment services, the role of employees is an important and decisive role, and the behavior of employees is intertwined with the identity of the service and organization. And organizations are forced to pay more attention to their employees in order to increase the quality of their services, and among them, the social security organization is an example The organization that provides healthcare services to citizens in Alborz province has been studied.

Now these questions are being asked whether the importance of internal marketing is considered in the social security organization of Alborz province? Does the social security organization of Alborz province carry out internal marketing activities and measures or not? What is the level of activities carried out in the social security organization in the field of internal marketing? Does it?

3.1. Necessity and importance of the research topic

The homogeneity and similarity of products has raised the quality of services provided to customers as the main factor that should be analyzed in competitive strategies. Many researches have been conducted in the field of service quality in Iran and other countries. But most researches have neglected the important role of employees in providing superior services.

One of the main aspects of improving and strengthening service quality and customer orientation of organizations is the type and quality of relationships between customers and employees. When the interactions between employees and customers are at a high level, customers will feel more satisfied. Claro et al. The macro goals should be involved and when there is this kind of insight and view towards internal customers, the organization's customer-oriented approaches will be strengthened and customer satisfaction will be achieved (ibid.: 137). Internal marketing is one of the vital tools and actions in this direction, which views the organization's employees as internal customers and it is based on the assumption that until the needs and demands of internal customers are met, it will not be possible to satisfy the needs of external customers.

Gronros (2000) stated that services require three types of external, mutual (interactive) and internal marketing (Figure 1-1). External marketing includes preparing, pricing, distributing and promoting customer services. (Reciprocal marketing describes the skills of employees in serving customers and deals more with the behavior of employees with customers). Internal marketing considers the training and motivation of employees in providing service (Cutler-Armstrong[7], 2014, 2014). Kotler states that internal marketing should surpass external marketing and the development of an internal marketing approach leads to the creation of a culture that creates behaviors in the most efficient and effective way that will lead to the provision of superior services to the customer. Therefore, in service marketing, the most important component of internal marketing is when the organization's internal resources and human capital are appropriate to the strategy, it will be effective when the internal and external environment of the organization are coordinated in the direction of this strategy.