The connections between Customer Relationship Management and Business Performance: Insights from the literature

Il presente lavoro si colloca sul filone degli studi inerenti al tema del Customer Relationship Management (CRM), dalla prospettiva delle performance aziendali. La scelta di approfondire questo argomento in relazione alle performance aziendali è riconducibile, in primo luogo, alla sua considerevole trattazione nella letteratura sul CRM; in secondo luogo, alla notevole distanza tra le ipotesi empiricamente confermate dai ricercatori e i risultati ottenuti da numerose imprese. Infatti, se il CRM è considerato da numerosi studiosi come uno strumento potenzialmente capace di apportare significativi miglioramenti alle performance aziendali, il tasso di fallimento nella sua implementazione risulta essere tutt’oggi particolarmente elevato. Lo scopo di questo lavoro è pertanto quello di acquisire una maggiore comprensione della più recente e rilevante letteratura scientifica, inerente a questa tematica, al fine di evidenziare le principali tendenze e gli eventuali gap, e quindi, identificare nuove variabili per esplorare ulteriormente la suddetta relazione e fornire implicazioni manageriali. Data la finalità esplicativa della ricerca, lo studio è stato condotto attraverso la metodologia della literature review, selezionando e analizzando gli articoli scientifici inerenti e di maggior impatto, pubblicati tra il 2010 e il 2018, nelle riviste accademiche più rilevanti.

This manuscript deals with Customer Relationship Management (CRM) from the perspective of business performance. The trigger of this research essentially arises from two considerations. From one side, among the CRM literature, the topic regarding its relationship with the business performance is highly recurring, and thus, of significant relevance. Many scholars have shown their interest in investigating if the CRM implementation has a direct, or even indirect, effect on the business performance, through which channels, under which circumstances, and to which extent. Indeed, if CRM is today recognized as a potentially valuable tool, capable of improving the company performance, through the enhancement of key customer relationships, the rate of failure in its implementation is still considerable. From here, the second consideration refers to the noticeable inconsistency between the mainly positive findings of the majority of researchers and the often rather disappointing results obtained from a considerable amount of company managers. In this perspective, the purpose of this study is to gain an understanding of the existing literature, or at least a part of it, relevant to this specific topic, in order to highlight the major trends and gaps, and thus, identify some insights to further explore the above-mentioned relationship. The research about CRM, which began in the ‘90s, has grabbed the attention of a huge number of practitioners and researchers, the latter producing a significant amount of studies, which, still nowadays, is continuing to grow. Indeed, CRM has gained a substantial relevance in the management research area but also among companies which aim to develop and create value from their relationships with key customers. Customer Relationship Management is conceived in many different ways by academics and, still today, there is not a common understanding of this phenomenon, especially for what concern its impact on the whole business and its effective brunt on the corporate performance. Methodologically, for this literature review we have been considering publications between 2010 and 2018. This work is structured as follows: the first chapter consists of an overview of CRM and its relationship with the Business Performance, and of the definition of the conceptual framework upon which this study is based. Moreover, the purpose of the study and the relative research questions are presented. In the second chapter, the methodology of the Systematic Literature Review is discussed in dept and it is compared to the ones adopted by other researchers in this particular field of study. The third chapter contains all the different stages of the review, composed of the article’s selection, the descriptive analysis, the source analysis, and the presentation of the findings. In the fourth and last chapter, a discussion of the above findings is provided, followed by practical implications for managers. Furthermore, research limitations are provided as well as some suggestions for further research.