Exploring the nature of effective customer relationship management capability in the Irish hotel sector

While effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is critical for firms to sustain competitive advantage, the academic literature provides little insight into the nature of CRM capability. The lack of a prescriptive focus is particularly problematic in high contact industries such as hospitality, where a strong guest focus is crucial to performance. The Resource-Based View of the Firm (RBV) literature provides a theoretical lens to examine CRM, and significant research has taken place on the customer-relating capability, which has provided a foundation for this research. Therefore, the aim of this study is to explore the nature of effective CRM capability within hotels. While CRM is a tool that helps to build customer relationships, it has been noted that not all CRM implementations have been successful. The literature does point to the importance of organisational culture to explain effective CRM. However, there has been limited empirical examination of the role of culture in this context. It was determined that in-depth case analysis would provide the optimum research approach to diagnose an effective CRM phenomenon within a hotel context. The hotel which provides the research site for the study is one of Ireland‘s iconic examples of CRM effectiveness, and has not been subject to detailed empirical analysis to date. A detailed case protocol was developed and a number of sources of information were used for the case study including depth interviews, documentary analysis, observation and sustained researcher interaction with the hotel. Data was analysed using Nvivo. The study found that the CRM-oriented culture in the hotel exhibits a strong sense of ‗family‘, reinforced by respect and dignity, role-modelling, motivation and empowerment. This dynamic informs the interaction of the key actors, managers, front-line employees and guests. The CRM-oriented culture also informs and is supported by organisational systems such as technology, recruitment and training. The study has resulted in the development of a ‗best practice‘ model for CRM in hotels, which makes a significant contribution to the limited research on CRM efficacy, and also addresses the need for a prescriptive approach to CRM in hotels. This model highlights that effective CRM capability is really composed of three key capabilities in customer-relating, employee-relating, and customer co-creation. This model also provides a number of important avenues for future research