Modelling CRM in a social media age

Abstract

Customer relationship management is a continually evolving domain that has been particularly affected by social media, which have revolutionised the way businesses and consumers interact. This paper on social CRM builds on a previous model of CRM prior to the growth of social media (Jayachandran etal., 2005). We present a new model for social CRM, including a new construct of customer engagement initiatives and adaptations of other constructs to cater for the impact of social media. An online survey was used to collect data from a population of marketing practitioners and partial least squares analysis was used to test the model. Findings show the importance of an underlying customer relationship orientation; how it impacts on social media technology use and customer engagement initiatives, and also directly on customer relationship performance. A relationship is also shown between engagement and relational information processes, which is viewed as a performance outcome of social CRM. Thus, from a managerial perspective, one recommendation we make is that organisations should utilise the rich customer information that is created with every customer engagement through social media to drive future marketing decisions.