Identifying the Dominant Perspective on Customer Relationship Management in the Last Decade 2000 – 2010

Abstract

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a popular field of research at the intersection of a number of disciplines such as marketing, business management, information technologies and computer sciences, closely followed by scholars, company executives, and consultant firms. The current global competitive environment leads firms to develop and strengthen their relations with their customers, their most valuable assets. Long-term, mutually beneficial relations that businesses build with their customers provide an important competitive advantage against competitors. An effective and efficient customer relationship management would turn into customer satisfaction and loyalty, lower costs, and higher shareholder value for the firms. The aim of this study is to identify the dominant perspective and its sub-concepts used on scholars’ conceptualization of CRM employed in customer relationship management literature. With this purpose, a literature review was conducted for the period of 2000- 2010. The results of the study show that customer relationship management was mostly conceptualized as a strategy by the scholars.