A Study of the Effects of Internal Marketing on Customer-oriented Social and Prosocial Behaviors (Case study: Hotels in Isfahan city)

The present paper, titled ‘A Study of the Effects of Internal Marketing on Customer-oriented Prosocial Behaviors’ investigates the important role of internal marketing on job satisfaction, organizational commitment and, finally, role-prescribed customer service and extra-role customer service (prosocial behavior) among hotel employees in Isfahan city. A main hypothesis (speculating the significant effect of internal marketing on customer-oriented prosocial behavior) and eleven sub-hypotheses (speculating the significant effect of empowerment, service training and service reward on organizational commitment and job satisfaction as well as speculating the significant effect of organizational commitment and job satisfaction on role-prescribed customer service and extra-role customer service (prosocial behavior), are presented. This research, in terms of its purpose, is an applied one; and in terms of implementation method, is a survey with a correlation approach. The population includes 140 experienced managers, vice-presidents and employees of the hotels in Isfahan city. The data were collected using questionnaires with a Cronbach's alpha coefficient calculated as 0.91, which includes personal data and main, specialized questions for examination of research hypotheses. From 155 distributed questionnaires, 140 (90%) were returned. The collected data were analyzed using SPSS and AMOS software programs through statistical tests at descriptive (frequency, percentage, accumulated percentage, average and standard deviation) and inferential (t-test, regression modeling, variance analysis, non- parametric Kolmogorov and Smirnov test, and Freedman non-parametric test) levels. The findings supported all research hypotheses. The results indicated that the ninth sub-hypothesis, with a path coefficient of 0.69 is of the highest importance, and that the seventh sub-hypothesis with a path coefficient of 0.18 is of the lowest importance. Thus, the internal marketing significantly affects the customer-oriented prosocial behaviors.