Adoption Model of Social Customer Relationship Management in the Palestinian Banking Sector

Derar Eleyan,Maha Ramadan

doi:10.5539/mas.v15n4p23

Abstract

Social CRM is a new technology that integrates social networking activities within traditional CRM itself. Social media might be the most effective strategy in the context of CRM technology concerning the availability of efforts and time by owners. Therefore, it&rsquo;s important for financial institutions to take advantage of it upon this opportunity by considering social CRM as part of development and enhancing relationship with their customers. Nevertheless, little empirical studies have focused on adoption of social CRM in banking sector. This research paper aims to investigate the factors that impact banks&rsquo; intention to adopt social CRM, based on combining the Technology-Organization-Environment (TOE) with Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) as the theoretical framework. TOE variables such as top management support and relative advantages found to have a direct impact on the two TAM mediating variables (perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use), and an indirect impact on social CRM adoption. Further, results suggested that consumer pressure and competitive pressure have a direct impact on social CRM adoption. The researcher tested the hypothesis using structural equation modeling (SEM). The findings from a survey of 220 employees in banks in Palestine showed that all eight hypotheses were supported as both consumer pressure and competitive pressure in the environmental context have a significant direct impact on social CRM adoption intention, followed by top management support in organizational and technological contexts; relative advantages have the most significant impact on perceived ease of use and perceived usefulness which in turn, have a direct and significant impact on social CRM adoption intention. The contribution of the study, limitations, future studies and conclusion are presented.&nbsp;

Highlights

Social media has become a new phenomenon that is challenging the traditional relationship between organizations and their customers (Abed, 2020)
Customers can benefit from Social Customer relationship management (CRM) in other ways, it gives them the ability to control the amount of information they get instead of being overloaded with information given by the company; they feel they are more involved in their own decision as they interact and share experiences with peers or specific communities and with business leaders and experts, which helps fulfill their emotional needs
Social marketing stimulate innovation as managers continuously seek ways to gain competitive advantage which adds a great value to their marketing strategies (Katsioloudes, Grant, and McKechnie, 2007; Trainor, Andzulis, Rapp, and Agnihotri, 2014); Firms’ innovation performance improves when their customers are involved in using social media and at the same time, they acquire a high level of capability in processing customers’ information and involvement (Wang and Kim, 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Social media has become a new phenomenon that is challenging the traditional relationship between organizations and their customers (Abed, 2020). Customer relationship management (CRM) is considered as a set of marketing principles, strategies and processes introduced in order to retain current customers and attract new ones through managing relationship (Choudhury & Harrigan, 2014). Since customer loyalty and customer retention are key benefits of a CRM system to an organization, working to retain existing customers by managing relationships with them can reduce costs of customer service and increase the organization’s revenues, as improving customer data sharing can contribute to more cross sales and up-sales opportunities and more effective targeting and customer segmentation (Swift, 2001). Traditional CRM strategies such as collecting and tracking data could face some difficulties institutes in gathering and analyzing information such mas.ccsenet.org

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