What is it about?

Recently, and due to the economic pressure in many developing countries, several small and medium enterprises have filed for bankruptcy, or downsized their business leading to the layout of hundreds of employees, which will deepen the economic problems and increase the circle of effect. Small and medium enterprises can follow other courses of action to address such issues. This paper aims to understand the possible impact of internal marketing practices and activities (internal product, internal price, internal promotion, workplace) during economic problems on the employees’ productivity in small and medium industrial enterprises.

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Why is it important?

The International Monetary Fund described the economic situation in Jordan as ‘still difficult’ and expected inflation (consumer price index) that jumped from –0.8% in 2016 to 4.5% in 2018 to keep rising. Many local firms are facing financial difficulties due to sales fall back, especially in the industrial sector where 30 distressed companies filed for bankruptcy by the end of last year. In Jordan, and most of the developing countries, the concept of internal marketing is embraced by local industrial enterprises compared to their western counterparts. However, many local industrial firms apply some aspects of internal marketing and exercise some of their activities. It is important to investigate the effect of such activities on the employees' productivity. The need to repeat many old projects and research to confirm that the result is still valid or to register any changes in the result has been neglected by the scientific community. The current focus is on researching new ideas and a new topic, which is very important of course but should never be the only concern of the research.

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I have reviewed the literature available about internal marketing in developing countries and internal marketing in small and medium businesses, the Arabic content in this field can be tricky. I decided to revisit this area and the result showed clear differences in the level of internal marketing activities utilized by the examined sector compared to what has been published! It was really interesting to find out that internal price ranked the least amount of the examined internal marketing activities. Employees were willing to endure more costs to work for their SMEs in exchange for other internal marketing activities.

Dr. Ghaith Mustafa Al-Abdallah
University of Kurdistan Hewler

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This page is a summary of: Can Internal Marketing Activities Save Small and Medium Industrial Enterprises in a Tough Economy Back to the Basics Approach, International Journal of Industrial and Systems Engineering, January 2020, Inderscience Publishers,
DOI: 10.1504/ijise.2020.10027354.
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