Abstract
Customer relationship management (CRM) can be thought of as IT-enabled relationship marketing. It has numerous definitions and perspectives, and success of implementation has been limited to date. This paper examines recent literature on the subject, drawing attention to the importance of a balance between strategy formulation, IT and organisational alignment when adopting and implementing CRM. It then discusses results of an exploratory study carried out amongst 34 South African organisations on their business objectives for CRM, the CRM applications that they have invested in or are considering, and the extent of integration of their customer data. The most important objectives and most widely used CRM applications are determined, and associations between applications and objectives are analysed. It is not apparent that CRM applications are selected in line with business objectives, and expected associations with objectives often do not exist for the objectives rated most important. Only certain aspects of customer data integration are significantly linked to objectives or CRM applications. The study suggests the need for fuller determination of strategy and objectives when involved with CRM investigation and adoption, and co-ordination at all levels of implementation between Marketing and IT.
Highlights
Customer relationship management (CRM) has emerged in recent years as the convergence of a number of factors. Berry (1983) coined the term ‘relationship marketing’, which encouraged a new movement towards customer relationships rather than customer transactions (Christopher, Payne & Ballantyne, 1991). Peppers and Rogers (1993) promoted the concept of one-to-one marketing and of mass customization, and Reichheld (1996) further motivated companies with his research on loyalty and empirical evidence of the profitability of customer retention
This paper reports on an exploratory study that aims to discover whether there is alignment between these two aspects, examining the level of integration of information from the customer viewpoint
The 34 South African organisations sampled rated the importance of a broad set of business objectives for CRM, many customer-focussed, and others concerned with internal efficiency
Summary
Customer relationship management (CRM) has emerged in recent years as the convergence of a number of factors. Berry (1983) coined the term ‘relationship marketing’, which encouraged a new movement towards customer relationships rather than customer transactions (Christopher, Payne & Ballantyne, 1991). Peppers and Rogers (1993) promoted the concept of one-to-one marketing and of mass customization, and Reichheld (1996) further motivated companies with his research on loyalty and empirical evidence of the profitability of customer retention. Customer relationship management (CRM) has emerged in recent years as the convergence of a number of factors. Berry (1983) coined the term ‘relationship marketing’, which encouraged a new movement towards customer relationships rather than customer transactions (Christopher, Payne & Ballantyne, 1991). Peppers and Rogers (1993) promoted the concept of one-to-one marketing and of mass customization, and Reichheld (1996) further motivated companies with his research on loyalty and empirical evidence of the profitability of customer retention. Customer lifetime value (CLV) has become a key element of CRM. There has been a surge of interest from software vendors and consultants, with CRM being one of the main three-letter acronyms promoted to follow the earlier installation of ERP systems, Y2K and the internet bubble
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