Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background and Research Motives
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Chapter 1 Introduction
1.1 Background and Research Motives
In Taiwan, there are so many realty incorporations that it seems to have become a
saturated market. In other words, it is the situation of “supply over demand”. Under
this circumstance, every realty incorporation is trying their best to appeal the external customers as to take up market share as much as possible. Most of the related
companies put an emphasis on offering the best services to external customers by means of external marketing; however, internal customers, who are the so-called employees and actually the ones that are in the front line interacting with the external customers, usually receive less attention and treatments from the company. But speaking of Sinyi Realty Incorporation (Sinyi Realty) would bring us different perspectives. Aside from its recognized honors and awards in terms of corporate governance, brand and outside services for more than two decades, it also performances well on the part of CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility). Most importantly, it thinks highly of the people-oriented spirit as the essence of the company. In this study, we focus more on organizational commitment out of CSR categories and more specifically, we want to figure out how Sinyi Realty treats its
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internal customers (employees) and further retains them for a long time. Besides, the way it communicates with its employees refers to the application of internal
marketing which aims to internally market both the job and the corporate to its
employees (Sasser and Arbeit, 1976). Further, at the same time, we would also adopt employee’s perspectives to find out how they consider the practices of internal
marketing, which refers to the state of employee psychological ownership. On this basis, we aim to explore the application of internal marketing and the performances of employee psychological ownership rooted in Sinyi Realty.
According to Gronroos (1984), in order to thoroughly achieve the goal of service marketing, it’s necessary to take internal marketing, external marketing and
interactive marketing into account simultaneously. Apart from putting emphasis on external marketing strategies, employers or managers are supposed to value the importance and influence of internal marketing. It is argued that when employees feel themselves being treated as internal customers and perceive investment in their development by the corporate, they would be more likely to contribute themselves to the corporate success and brand-image improvement (Winter, 1985; Berry and Parasuraman, 1991; Green, Walls and Schrest, 1994; Chiang, 2009). More explicitly, when employers actively interact with employees and further create reciprocal relationship with them, employees would be more willing to actively interact with
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external customers and voluntarily pursue the corporate’s success (George, 1990; Bak,
Vogt, George, and Greentree, 1994). In short, effective implementation of internal marketing would meet the needs of employees and motivate them to become more
customer-conscious, which ultimately leads to customer satisfaction and fulfilment of corporate’s objective.
On the other hand, we are also supposed to stress the significance of employee psychological ownership. After implementing the strategies of internal marketing, how do the employees feel and evaluate the efforts practiced by the corporate? There are many empirical evidences indicating that psychological ownership for the
corporate and its brand is regarded as decisive role in producing favorable work-related attitudes and behaviors among employees (Vandewalle, Van Dyne, and Kostova, 1995; Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, and Sowa, 1986; Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Paine, and Bachrach, 2000; Pierce, Kostova and Dirks, 2001; Van Dyne and Pierce, 2004; Avey, Avolio, Crossley, and Luthans, 2009; Chiang, 2009). Besides, employees who possessively have feelings of ownership for the corporate or its brand
would have great likelihood to obtain positive attitude, a sense of responsibility and identification with the corporate’s culture and value (Van Dyne and Pierce, 2004). To
some degree, employee psychological ownership can be seen as an indicator that whether the practice of internal marketing is effective throughout the corporate.
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Accordingly, this study would adopt both primary research and secondary analysis as to explore the practices of internal marketing, and then interview with several
employees to figure out the development of employee psychological ownership within Sinyi Realty.
In most of previous related studies, they aim to verify the relations of internal marketing and employee psychological ownership respectively with other variables
found in the corporate. Thus, it is widely recognized that positive relations exist among corporate’s culture, corporate’s investment in employees, employee
psychological ownership for the corporate and its brand, and ensuing altruistic behaviors (Podsakoff et al., 2000; Hatch and Schulz, 2003; Van Dyne and Pierce, 2004; Mayhew, Ashkanasy, Bramble, and Gardner, 2007). However, there are less qualitative studies focusing on exploring and analyzing the practices of internal marketing and the performance of employee psychological ownership within certain
corporate at the same time, let alone the case study of Sinyi Realty. In addition, among other realty’s companies of Taiwan, Sinyi Realty is well known as having conspicuous influences on the realty’s market in Taiwan, and as one of the benchmark
company specific to service-oriented realty industry. In this regard, deeply exploring the components and practices of internal marketing and examining the performance of
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employee psychological ownership within Sinyi Realty can manifest the research value of this study.