The Effect of Sustainability Orientation on CRM Adoption

Abstract

As research stresses the relevance of sustainability orientation and the necessity of viewing it as a key source of organizations’ competitive advantage, interest in it from a number of academic fields is growing and gaining ground. Furthermore, organizations are under tremendous pressure to be more socially responsible and environmentally sustainable while staying customer-focused. This has resulted in the development of the practice of customer relationship management (CRM) towards sustainability, which considers social, economic, and environmental implications while developing fruitful, long-term customer relationships. The main goal of this study was to determine whether there is a relationship between individuals’ sustainability beliefs and their intention to use CRM systems (intention) and commitment to organizations that provide CRM systems (commitment). It is proposed that sustainability orientation indirectly predicts two outcome constructs, intention and commitment, through two mediators, namely, attitude towards using CRM systems and trust in firms providing such systems. The data were collected from Australia using an online survey panel with a total of 303 completed responses. The results showed that the hypothesized relationships between sustainability orientation and attitude towards using CRM systems and trust in the firms providing CRM systems were all significant and in the proposed direction. Attitude and trust were found to significantly affect intention to adopt CRM systems and commitment to the firms that provide such systems, confirming the hypothesized mediation role of attitude and trust. Furthermore, this mediation was partial since there were significant and direct relationships between sustainability orientation and the two outcome constructs, intention and commitment.