Attitude is an intermediate outcome (leading to behaviour) and for this attitudinal outcome, marketers need to develop a conceptual framework to accommodate psychological processes which produce attitudinal acceptance. How the message achieves attitudinal outcomes is of interest, especially in marketing. However, it is not an easy task for marketers to measure the message input that affects the attitudinal outcomes because situational factors could influence these outcomes (Shrum et al., 2012). It is true that exposure really affects the attitude positively but the cause-effect pattern of attitude change is rarely studied. This why social identity theory is used in the present study because it provides knowledge of the persuasion upon their psychological contracts.
These develop through interaction between the individual and organization. So their psychological withdrawal can be assessed by their intentions to continue their work for the organization.
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processes that changes or forms attitudes. This theory is applied to test how the exposure of internal marketing can affect attitudes (cognitive-affective, i.e., moral identity and moral emotions aspects) and the factors (empathy, gratitude and identity salience) that might possibly shape the attitudinal outcomes.
Empirical research in this area is limited and more research is needed on the impact of internal marketing on the organization’s internal and external aspects. Balabanis et al. (1997) emphasised that future research is needed to look into volunteers’
attitudes when exploring the impact of marketing to provide an ideal model or scale to measure whether charity organizations are able to attract and retain volunteers or not. According to Reynoso and Moores (1996), internal marketing is an effective application and has two-fold benefits. One is to deliver information and the second is to ask about feedback, which increases compatibility and strengthens the relationships. Lings (2004) highlighted the importance of communication in internal marketing as communication is an integral driver of internal marketing. This communication may take place face to face, via letters or by telephone conversation (Lings and Brooks, 1998; Lings, 2004). However, it is necessary to keep in mind that volunteers join charity organizations to meet or fulfil specific organizational needs but not on an infinite basis.
Indeed, it is becoming challenging for the marketing managers of charity or non-profit organizations to retain current volunteers/donors and attract new ones or increase the level of contributions (Sierra and Mcquitty, 2007). There are many marketing applications that are cost effective, such as internal marketing. And it is time to focus on internal marketing rather than external marketing, especially in charity organizations, in order to meet their objectives.
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Sargeant et al. (2006) stated that the quality of non-profit communication campaigns has a significant impact on the donor’s contributions. The organization’s management should be supportive to internal marketing. It is assumed that internal marketing may communicate the charity organization’s mission more extensively and regularly to volunteers, and also acknowledge and recognize the volunteers’
contributions. Internal marketing can play an effective role to employ and retain the best volunteers/people for the best tasks. In other words, internal marketing is a marketing technique to deal with employees’ concerns within an organization.
Internal marketing motivates the employees (in the current context, volunteers) to serve the cause to their best level. Internal marketing bridges the marketing and human resource policies for effective organizational output (Greene et al., 1994).
Green et al. (1994) postulated that in high-contact service organizations, service quality is dependent largely upon the service provider. That is why these service organizations need to be more focused on internal applications of marketing; the same applies to the charity organizations. The reason is marketing plays the role of stimuli which can trigger certain emotions as well as the willingness of the individuals to engage in perspective taking and empathy (Schmitt, 1999). Actually marketers view consumers as rational and emotional human beings who are concerned with achieving pleasurable experiences, for example social-identity experiences that result from belongingness to a group/society. Marketing implements such experiences through communications, visual and verbal identity, electronic media, etc. So marketing has an ability to create holistic experiences that integrate with individual experiences (Schmitt, 1999). Such experiences provide emotional, cognitive, and behavioural values. Therefore internal marketing can integrate with the individual’s emotional experiences and if emotions can perform
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an information function, then the role of internal marketing will be more polished in the presence of emotions and people will more effectively comply with it. However, Bekkers and Wiepking (2007) have more precisely explained that the charity campaigns with moral emotional (either positive or negative) appeals stimulate actual giving. So the present study proposes that internal marketing has a positive relationship with both positive and negative moral emotions. The reason is that an application of positive moral emotions motivates volunteering by providing good experiences of volunteering. On the other hand, by addressing negative moral emotions, marketing can integrate with individual negatives emotions which may help to cope with negative feelings, i.e., guilt, and boost morale for volunteering.
Hence specific hypotheses under this situation are:
H1a. Internal marketing is expected to have a positive relationship with positive moral emotions.
H1b. Internal marketing is expected to have a positive relationship with negative moral emotions.
Tajfel (1978) explained that social identity is derived from cognitive awareness of a person’s membership of a group, the evaluation of positive and negative implications of group membership and emotional involvement with a group. This self-awareness of association with an organization helps an individual to achieve a social identity. Tajfel and Turner (1979 and 1986) mentioned that positive social identity could bring a unique identity to the individual as a consequence of membership. Sometimes contextual cues influence the social identity (Aquino and Reed, 2002; Forehand and Deshpande, 2001; Forehand et al., 2002), e.g., visual images and words. Exposure to these cues increases the possibility that consumers may use social identity as marketing stimulus in the evaluation (Forehand and
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Deshpande, 2001; Forehand et al., 2002). According to social identity theory the goal orientation of social identity provides a specific evaluative response to the stimuli relevant to that social identity. Above all, personality traits may affect the evaluation of contextual cues in the course of accessing the social identity. The personality factors (e.g., moral identity) that strengthen the social identity link with self are more sensitive to contextual cues in the environment. “In addition to strengthening the social identity components of the self-concept, interaction with groups is also likely to influence the goals individuals pursue and deem important to themselves and others” (Reed and Forehead, 2002: p. 22).
As Schneider (1986) mentioned, the sense of identity is also limited by a volunteer’s experience. It can produce satisfaction, lower turnover and raise level of performance. It is important to understand how identity is linked to the role and organization a person works for and how they feel the organization or its work is a part of the self (Kleine et al., 1993) and how they cannot imagine themselves without it (Oliver, 1993). Therefore, if volunteers receive clear information about their role they will be in a position to contribute much better than if they do not have this information (Mitchell and Taylor, 1997). A conclusion is drawn on the basis of Reed’s (2004) work on social identity suggested that the evaluated content is linked to a person’s social identity, which influences attitude formation and indicating the influence of communication (in the present research internal communication) as a contributor. Reed (2002) explained that people with a strong identity rely on internal cues such as feelings and people with new or relatively weak identity rely on external cues. Therefore for a strong and long-term bond with an organization, it is necessary to promote those identities that people find important for them. So if internal marketing addresses contextual cues (e.g., characteristics that might
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describe a moral person, or activities that provides expression of these characteristics) that exist in the organization and are relevant to the individual’s moral identification then it can create a strong bond between volunteers and the organization. This logic suggests a hypothesis as follows:
H1c. Internal marketing is expected to have a positive relationship with volunteers’ moral identity.
Many studies have focused on the role of emotions in consumer behaviour in different contexts, e.g., emotions evoked by advertisements affect consumer attitudes toward the advertisement and the related brand, and consumer behaviour (Burke and Edell, 1989; Malle and Holbrook, 2012). Indeed, consumer emotions (e.g., empathy, gratitude) have been hypothesized as a major mediating mechanism in the consumption experiences (Griffin et al., 1993).
According to Batchy (2007), emotional utility is a strong motivation to support a charity. This is facilitated by emotional constructs that drive commitment and charitable giving. However, Gomes and Gunderson (2003) concluded that volunteering has a strong relation with empathy; as such work reflects a person’s behaviour for others’ equity and welfare. All the same, if a person volunteers for an organization that serves needy people, then the organizations’ treatment of that person is important for volunteering, either short term or long term. Similarly, Lazarus (1991) and Daunt and Harris (2012) explained that both internal and contextual/situational factors lead to emotional responses especially if those factors have motivational relevance. This understanding provides a good marketing strategy for building relationships with volunteers (Kolyesnikova et al., 2009;
McCullough et al., 2001). Hence an understanding of gratitude can potentially be used by marketing managers in their relational exchanges (Raggio and Folse, 2009)
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with organizational stakeholders. From a marketing perspective, a vital concern is how individuals cope with emotions because coping can influence behaviour (Yi &
Baumgartner, 2004). Therefore, internal marketing can help volunteers to cope with their emotions through promoting empathic and gratitude concerns between volunteers and the charity. Hence:
H1d. Internal marketing is expected to have a positive relationship with volunteers’ empathy.
H1e. Internal marketing is expected to have a positive relationship with volunteers’ gratitude.
Craig-Lees et al. (2008: p. 21) suggested that “the interaction between pro-social dispositions and participation may have nuances that should be explored, probably via more in-depth directed research”. In seeking to know how social identity salience derives from self-importance, Reed (2004) identified that identity salience is evoked through interaction between the self-importance of social identity/identity salience and its relation to the object evaluation which carried the identity cue (e.g.
internal marketing: newsletters, emails etc). Further there is a relationship between social identity self-importance and identity relevant stimuli, especially identity salience evoked by exposure to an identity cue. That is why “managers in non-profit organizations should focus on salience of their donor [volunteers]’ organization related identity and developing such identities in potential donors” (Arnett et al.
2003: p. 102). In Arnett et al.’s (2003) research, identity salience played a major role for relationship marketing particularly in non-profit organizations. So, if internal marketing is adopted in charities as a means of relationship building with volunteers then it is necessary to understand the relationship between internal marketing and
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identity salience, in regard to promoting volunteerism by addressing the volunteers’
salient identity. The hypothesis formulated here is:
H1f. Internal marketing is expected to have a positive relationship with
volunteers’ identity salience.