CRM to social CRM: the integration of new technologies into customer relationship management

Abstract

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a continually evolving domain and now social media technologies have revolutionized the way businesses and consumers interact. Hence, the new dimension of social CRM focuses on customer engagement domain, and now social media technologies have revolutionised the way businesses and consumers interact. This paper focuses on social CRM and builds on a previous CRM model proposed by Jayachandran et al. (2005), adopting the resource-based view theory and the equity theory. This paper presents a new model for social CRM, including a new construct of customer engagement initiatives and adaptations of other constructs, to take cognisance of the impact of social media technologies on CRM. Data were collected from a population of marketing practitioners using an online survey technique and the model was tested using PLS-SEM. From a theoretical perspective, the study contributes to an understanding of the change in communications between the customer and the marketer, and focuses on interactive relationships with customers. From a managerial perspective, businesses should utilise the rich customer information generated through every customer engagement using social media, to drive future marketing decisions.