An integrated model for investigating the impact of social crm on performance of smes in developing countries: Instrument development

Abstract

Social media have emerged as a revolutionary Internet-related technology and have become a primary source of products’ information for customers. Social media can be used by SMEs to develop social CRM in improving their performance. However, there is a lack of understanding regarding the significant factors that SMEs, more specific in developing countries, need to consider when assigning their resources for social CRM adoption. This research proposes an integrated model to investigate the impact of social CRM on the SMEs performance in developing countries based on three dominant theoretical models; Fit-Viability Model (FVM), Network Externalities and Resources Based View (RBV). An instrument is also developed to help collecting the required data to empirically verify the proposed model. The proposed model may help SMEs to make a decision to adopt social CRM based on assessing the fitness of social media to the CRM tasks and the readiness of the firm to implement social CRM, so that the performance can be improved.