Perspectives of customer relationship management (CRM) : theory, results of an empirical study from Switzerland and management implications

Not only the field of Marketing has intensively dealt with the topic of Customer relationship management (CRM), mostly under the category of "relationship marketing", but also the field of Information Systems has intensively dealt with the topic. The current academic discussion poses the question of what path CRM has actually taken in hindsight, what the topic's current state is in practice, where problems have existed, and what can be learned from them for the future. Our study delineates the different perspectives of CRM that have contributed to the diversification of the discipline so far, discusses the different problems that result from the different perspectives of CRM, and investigates which CRM perspectives dominate in business, and where concrete success factors and/or reasons for CRM failure can be seen on the basis of an empirical study of 503, 547, 332 and finally 606 Managers of Swiss companies in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010