Customer Relationship Management in the Era of Social Web and Social Customer: An Investigation of Customer Engagement in the Greek Retail Banking Sector

Abstract

The transition from a product-centric to a customer-centric business culture has been the subject of debate and research for more than a decade and in recent years many inquiries have been made about Customer Relationship Management. However, the main body of research around CRM was carried out in an environment quite different from the actual one. Apart from the possibilities and prospects that accompany new technologies and the new generation of Media, the big change stems from the strength gained by the contemporary Social Consumer which brings firms to operate within a Customer Ecosystem. Traditional CRM is morphing to Social CRM and the key concept in this new marketing and business environment is Customer Engagement. This is accompanied by the Involvement of the customer to a new type of relationship with the enterprise, characterized by co-creation of knowledge, offers, products and value. The present study attempts to estimate the degree to which the effectiveness of the so far (traditional) CRM practices, that are reflected on the customer-performance measures, affect the possibilities of Customer Engagement. The results show that the level of Customer Overall Satisfaction and Customer Affective Commitment to the bank, as well as the active Social Media Presence of the bank, should be considered as significant determinants of customer's willingness to get involved in a new type of relation with the bank.