Extending customer relationship management: from empowering firms to empowering customers

Abstract

Purpose

The focus of customer relationship management (CRM) literature has been predominantly on the firm perspective and on IT, not on customer or service orientation and value co‐creation. This paper seeks to explore and analyse contemporary CRM frameworks and suggests future research directions. To achieve this, a thorough literature review on CRM is conducted focusing on recent advances within CRM. This provides a good basis for critically analysing the current status of both CRM theory and practice.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper reviews CRM literature published 2003‐2011. Based on the literature review, it introduces a conceptual framework of the changing role of customer data in the CRM framework.

Findings

Literature has not adequately addressed the role of the emerging service orientation, value co‐creation and the opportunities provided by new technology and communication channels. Drawing on a thorough CRM literature review, we argue that a fundamental change in CRM thinking is needed to shift the focus of CRM from empowering firms to empowering customers.

Research limitations/implications

The paper is conceptual in nature and presents only a few empirical examples of the changing role of customer data within the CRM framework. The paper calls for more research on the emerging service orientation, value co‐creation and the impact of new media on the contemporary CRM framework.

Practical implications

Customer data remain, and will remain, a critically important input resource informing a firm's processes. However, using customer data for the benefit of the customer too, to serve customers better, is clearly an emerging phenomenon. Refining and giving customer data back to customers may represent a future mechanism through which companies deepen and develop their customer relationship management to a whole new level.

Originality/value

The study is among the first attempting to critically evaluate the contemporary CRM framework from the perspective of empowering customers.

Citation

Saarijärvi, H., Karjaluoto, H. and Kuusela, H. (2013), "Extending customer relationship management: from empowering firms to empowering customers", Journal of Systems and Information Technology, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 140-158. https://doi.org/10.1108/13287261311328877