New Media and Mass Communication www.iiste.org ISSN 2224-3267 (Paper) ISSN 2224-3275 (Online) Vol.55, 2016 33 Internal Communication and Market Orientation of Mobile Telecommunication Companies in Nigeria Hamilton-Ibama, Edith-O Lolia Postgraduate Student Faculty of Management Sciences Rivers State University of Science and Technology N. Gladson Nwokah Department of Marketing Faculty of Management Sciences Rivers State University of Science and Technology ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to empirically investigate how Internal Communication influences Market Orientation of Mobile Telecommunication Firms in Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive investigation to establish the relationship between internal communications and market orientation. Instruments from previous studies were refined and used in this study. Data analyses were aided by the use of SPSS version 20 and hypotheses were tested using the Simple Regression method. After the data analysis, it was revealed that: Most sampled employees agreed that internal communication has led the firm to have sufficient understanding of the needs and preferences of customers to be able to continuously create superior value for them, understand the short-term strengths and weaknesses and the long-term capabilities of both current and potential competitors, and has been responsible for the improved level of their networks’ ability to coordinate personnel and other resources throughout the organisation. Internal Communication was found to be a strong dimension of Internal Marketing that positively and significantly influences all the three measures of Market Orientation (customer focus, competitor focus and interfunctional coordination). Based on the findings and conclusions the study recommended that since Internal Communication positively relates with Market Orientation, Mobile telecommunication firms in Nigeria should improve on how both informal and formal information are exchanged between management and employee. Improve their physical facilities, equipment and communication materials, create opportunities for career development and regularly evaluate employees satisfaction with their work situation to know if employee’ enjoy and sees their job as pleasurable and satisfying Introduction. There has been considerable focus on how external communication – advertising, public relations, etc helps organisations to differentiate themselves from competitors in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Internal communication merits close attention as employees may be the most important audience for a company's organisational communication. Not as much of attention has been given to the strategic role what internal communication can play. Internal communication ought to be treated as the ‘first frontier’ in the battle for the customer: when it is founded on strong corporate values, internal communication can help transform key employees. Indeed, employees are considered one of the most trusted information sources about an organisation (Dortok, 2006). There is no question, that communication is the key element in the success of strong two-way relationships. The use of certain tools, channels, communication resources depend on numerous factors, the nature of the message, the personality of the leaders, the target group needs and of course the overall business sentiment all influence the purpose of internal communication. Evident grouping of communication channels is the differentiation of formal and also informal forms. To a certain extent negative perception of informal communication earlier seems to occupy the day in the literature and as well as in practice too. Some authors interpret informal contact form as a network, the strength of which depends on how much it holds the organisation together (Borgulya, 2003). Informal communication above and beyond its effectiveness also distorts, is accidental, and also in this sense it may often be harmful. The communication within organisations can be written, electronic, or face-to-face, of which the latter is complex, interactive, however time consuming and subjective. Still, these channels can be considered as ‘richer’ than written formats and also electronic brought to you by CORE View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk provided by International Institute for Science, Technology and Education (IISTE): E-Journals