Customer Relationship Management Case Study

681 Words2 Pages

In order to elaborate on the thesis topic, there is a need to introduce basic theo-retical concepts used in this work. The author concentrates on several main terms revealing a concrete meaning of each.
Customer relationship management (CRM)
"CRM is a core business strategy that integrates internal processes and func-tions, and external networks, to create and deliver value to targeted customers at a profit. It is grounded on high quality customer-related data and enabled by information technology". (Buttle 2009, p. 15)
Electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) eCRM refers to a business strategy that connects all business aspects of a company together with the aim of creation and maintenance of customer loyalty via utilization of technology. It pretends to manage company´s interaction with its clients via various channels and media in order to keep and develop relationships (Fjermestad and Romano 2006)
Trust
Peelen and Beltman (2013, p. 11) define trust as a "willingness to rely on an exchange partner in whom one has confidence". It refers to the desire of one party to create and develop a positive behaviour towards another party with an intention to create a positive outcome (Van Vuuren et al. 2012)
Commitment
Commitment is a maximum effort made by exchange partners towards their relationships with the purpose of its maintenance (Morgan & Hunt 1994). "Commitment to the relationship is defined as an enduring desire to maintain a valued relationship", claim Morgan and Hunt (1994, p. 23).

Website
"The organization's website is a platform that it owns on which it can more ef-fectively manage the way it is presented and the way it wants to interface with customers". (Peelen and Beltman 2013, p. 310)
3 Theoretical framew...

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...and its customers based on basic rela-tionship principles. It is mutual, interactive and iterative, creating and maintain-ing its own exchange context over time. Changing behaviour of each party to-wards another, the relationship provides them with benefits that lead to suc-cessful relationships. A successful relationship will result each party to trust another, it means that a successful relationship will be characterized by high trust level and involved parties will be ready to contribute and make an effort for relationship maintainers (Peppers & Rogers 2007).
Summing up, it can be said that the relationship has a wide range of character-istics and associations. The Figure 1 conjures different feelings and associa-tions that have exchange parties towards its relationship. The author created the figure based on summarized data according to Peelen and Buttle (2013).

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