Investigating the Impact of CRM Resources on CRM Processes: A Customer Life-cycle Based Approach in the Case of a Greek Bank

Abstract

Contemporary economy, which is characterized by globalization, increasing competition and advances in communication and information technology, force companies to depart from traditional marketing doctrines and adopt a customer-centric approach by focusing on managing customer relationships. Relationship marketing is a marketing strategy enforcing companies to deal with enormous customer data management challenges, thus necessitating the deployment of supporting IT systems. This need has been covered to a great extent by the development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems.The aim of the present study is to investigate the impact of a company's CRM related human, organizational and technological resources on its CRM processes. A customer life-cycle based approach has been chosen. As a result of this, CRM processes have been mapped on the initiation, acquisition, regain, maintenance, retention, expansion and exit customer life-cycle stages.Field research was conducted by utilizing an interviewer-administered questionnaire, which was developed by adopting relevant work reported in literature. The case industry chosen was the Greek banking sector. The survey was conducted among all the employees of a Greek leading bank's 10 branches located in the region of Thessaly, who were involved in CRM processes. The final sample comprised 102 correctly answered questionnaires. Inter-item analysis was used to verify the scale's factors for internal consistency or reliability. The Cronbach's alpha, which was calculated for each scale, ranged between 0.819 and 0.912. Regression analyses were then performed to examine the impact of CRM resources on customer life-cycle stages. The results highlighted that CRM organizational resources are the most vital, since they have a positive effect on the processes of all customer life-cycle stages. Moreover, human resources were proved to have a significant effect on the early (initiation, acquisition, regain) and middle (maintenance, retention) customer life-cycle stages, while their impact on the late stages (expansion, exit) is minimal. Finally, technological resources were shown to have a small influence on the middle customer life-cycle stages.