CRM 2012 in world


Customer relationship management  (CRM) has attracted the expanded 
attention of practitioners and scholars.  More and more companies are 
adopting customer-centric strategies,  programs, tools, and technology for 
efficient and effective customer relationship management.  They are 
realizing the need for in-depth and integrated customer knowledge in order 
to build close cooperative and partnering relationships with their customers.  
The emergence of new channels and technologies is significantly altering 
how companies interface with their customers, a development bringing about 
a greater degree of integration between marketing, sales, and customer 
service functions in organizations.  For practitioners, CRM represents an 
enterprise approach to developing full-knowledge about customer behavior
and preferences and to developing programs and strategies that encourage 
customers to continually enhance their business relationship with the 
company. 
Marketing scholars are studying the nature and scope of CRM and 
are developing conceptualizations  regarding the value and process of 
cooperative and collaborative relationships between buyers and sellers.  
Many scholars with interests in several sub-disciplines of marketing, such as 
channels, services marketing, business-to-business marketing, advertising, 
and so forth, are actively engaged in studying and exploring the conceptual 
foundations of managing relationships with customers.  They are interested 
in strategies and processes for customer classification and selectivity; one-toone
 relationships with individual customers; key account management and 
customer business development processes; frequency marketing, loyalty 
programs, cross-selling and up-selling  opportunities; and various forms of 
partnering with customers including co-branding, joint-marketing, codevelopment, 
and other forms of strategic alliances (Parvatiyar & Sheth, 
2000).   
Scholars from other academic disciplines, particularly those 
interested in the area of information systems and decision technologies, are 
also exploring new methodologies and techniques that create efficient frontline 
information systems (FIS) to effectively manage relationships with 
customers.  Several software tools  and technologies claiming solutions for 
various aspects of CRM have recently been introduced for commercial 
application.  The majority of these tools promise to individualize and 
personalize relationships with customers by providing vital information at 
every point in the interface with the customer.  Techniques such as 
collaborative filtering, rule-based expert systems, artificial intelligence, and 
relational databases are increasingly being applied to develop enterprise 
level solutions for managing information on customer interactions.  The 
purpose of this paper is not to evaluate these application tools and 
technologies.  Those aspects are considered elsewhere by the authors as well 
as by several commercial research organizations, such as Forrester Research 
and the Gartner Group.  Our objective is to provide a conceptual foundation 
for understanding the domain of customer relationship management.  To do 
so, we develop a framework for understanding the various aspects of CRM 
strategy and implementation.  A synthesis of the existing knowledge on 
CRM done by integrating diverse explorations forms the basis of our 
framework.  We draw upon the literature on relationship marketing, as CRM 
and relationship marketing are not distinguished from each other in the 
marketing literature (Parvatiyar & Sheth, 2000).  
In the sections that follow, we define what CRM is and what it 
promises to offer.  We also identify the forces impacting on the marketing 
environment in recent years that have led to the rapid development of CRM 
strategies, tools, and technologies.  A typology of CRM programs is 
presented to provide a parsimonious  view of the various terms and 
terminologies that are used to refer to different activities.  We then describe 
a process model of CRM to better delineate the challenges of customer 
relationship formation, its governance, its performance evaluation, and its 
evolution.  Finally, we examine the research issues related to CRM.