How CRM strategy impacts organizational performance: Perspective of customer equity drivers

Abstract

This article addresses how an organization's customer relationship management (CRM) process affects customer equity drivers and, in turn, organizational performance. By raising a three-staged model including CRM processes, customer equity drivers and organizational performance, the authors assert that customer equity drivers mediate between CRM processes and organizational performance. The empirical analysis is based on a composite survey structure that gathers data from different types of informants according to the variables. The findings indicate that the expansion process has a positive relationship with all customer equity drivers. However, the acquisition process significantly influences both perceived value equity and brand equity, whereas the retention process significantly influences relationship equity only. In addition, the study shows that all customer equity drivers influence the organizational performance, given the existing customers. The relationship equity among the customer equity drivers has the strongest effect on performance. © 2012 Macmillan Publishers Ltd.