An examination of implementing customer relationship management by Chinese-owned SMEs

Abstract

In the last decade, the ever increasing pressure of competition faced by businesses has led to the development of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In short, CRM is the practice of integrating all aspects of business functions for dealing with customers, with the assistance of technology, and with the intention of boosting company profitability. CRM has been widely promoted as a critical contributor to business survival. However, the high failure rate of CRM projects has also attracted research attention and many factors have been discussed as contributing to the success or failure of CRM implementation. This research argues that CRM is not simply a software package or a computer program. CRM, instead, should be perceived as a strategic issue in order to realize its potential. In addition, this study also argues that CRM implementation is affected by organizational, strategic and cultural factors. In particular, this study was conducted within the context of Chinese small and medium-size enterprises (SMEs), with company size and culture as two major focuses in this study. SMEs were chosen as this segment has been overlooked in CRM study, yet it represents a great potential for growth in CRM adoption. Chinese culture was chosen as most of CRM studies have been conducted within a western cultural background. The Chinese culture has distinctive characteristics different from western culture, and this has strong influences on business operations. A quantitative method was adopted for this study and a mailed survey was used to collect data to examine the relevance of these factors within this context. Research participants were recruited using a systematic sampling technique through a comprehensive Chinese business directory. Results suggest that there are positive associations between a company's CRM implementation and its practice of organizational, strategic, and cultural issues. In particular, four organizational issues – organizational integration, executive commitment, system readiness, and resource availability; three strategic issues – vision, planning, and customer-centric culture; and one cultural issue – networking, have an impact on a company's CRM implementation.