Mobile Customer Relationship Management : A study of barriers and facilitators to mCRM adoption

Managing customer relations had become a necessity for companies who want to succeed in today’s customer oriented market. New systems are developed that allow firms to manage and govern their relationships to the customers. These applications are called Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems and have become one of the most widely adopted business solution in the private sector. In the mean time, mobile internet and mobile marketing have become two of the most popular subjects mentioned in business literature today. A new system that combines CRM and mobile technologies has recently been developed: mobile CRM (mCRM). This type of system will allow companies to enhance their way of working with customer relations and enables new ways of offering value to customers. The market size of mCRM systems has grown from a $120 million industry in 2001 to a $1, 7 billion industries in 2005. The combination of the growing trend of customer focus, mobile technologies and mCRM systems will most likely lead to more companies investing in mCRM solutions. Still an interesting question of the reasons behind mCRM adoption remains unanswered. The main focus of this thesis is to find out why companies chose to adopt or not adopt mCRM systems. Theories about CRM, mCRM and the spreading of technology (The Technology Acceptance Model) have been gathered and examined in order to support the research. After a gained insight of the subject matter, a methodology is discussed explaining research approach. A qualitative approach is used and interviews are conducted in order to find barriers and facilitators to mCRM adoption. Four companies from different industry sectors where interviewed, answering to questions concerning their level of IT adoption, CRM strategy and perception of mCRM. The research resulted in several reasons for mCRM acceptance and rejection. The primary reason for investing mCRM, or considering investing in mCRM, was found to be the need to reach customers and sales force anytime and anywhere. Also, current IT adoption and IT dependency, as well as industry sector, are found to influence attitude towards mCRM. Factors that are found not to affect mCRM adoption are size of the firm and external pressure from the market. The overall perception of mCRM is positive among the respondents and all believe that the mobility aspect of CRM will become increasingly popular