An empirical study into the foundations of CRM success

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has attracted the attention of both marketing practitioners and researchers over the last decade. Significant progress has been made in identifying and researching the components of CRM individually and in the design of a strategic framework. The role of CRM applications, customer information, customer interaction, customer loyalty and a customer-centric strategy has been the subject of research lately. However no comprehensive research has been conducted into the role of these CRM components in achieving CRM success across the line. Also we have yet to find research that empirically shows evidence for the relationship between each CRM component. The goal of our research is to determine the impact of CRM components on each other and on CRM success. We will strive to do so by using explorative qualitative research into CRM practitioners to formulate propositions. These propositions will in turn be tested in a quantitative analysis of data collected from 250 Dutch companies. Through building a Structural Equations Model (SEM), we determine the role and influence of the key components of CRM on each other and on CRM success