Can Firms Develop a Service-Dominant Organisational Culture to Improve CRM?

Introduction: What Does Crm Involve?

Customer Relationship Management has been discussed extensively since the early 1990’s and yet consensus on what it actually is has failed to materialise (Buttle, 2009). Definitions range from inward-outward approaches that help firms to do things to customers (software solutions or at best IT capabilities for management of customers), (Buttle, 2009) to the more outward-inward strategic outlook that aims to satisfy customers and thus generate maximum profit and/or revenue through developing customer-centric behaviour (Ehrenthal, 2005) and relationships with customers (Reinartz, Krafft, & Hoyer, 2004). Payne (2006) reports that “appropriate marketing strategy, IT systems and organizational culture” (p.353) are necessary for CRM to be ‘effective’. Verhoef and Langerak (2002) suggest that CRM involves creating a customer-orientated philosophy or culture, utilising customer orientation, relationship marketing and database marketing to create value for customers using information and communication technology as tools. Buttle (2004) and Payne and Frow (2006) offer two of the most developed models of CRM which identify ‘culture and leadership’ and ‘change management’ respectively as key for CRM implementation. The key to understanding CRM is to recognise that it not merely software or a tactical tool but the combination of a customer-focused strategy and practises, that lead to the right processes, supported by the right systems and software, which can lead to increased customer satisfaction and retention, reduced cost-to-serve, more effective use of information and increased profitability over time (Buttle, 2009; Rigby, Reicheld, & Schefter, 2002; Srivastava, Shervani, & Fahey, 1999). Fundamentally CRM is more than a single over-riding strategy; it is a combination of multiple phenomena and practises (Payne and Frow, 2006) with Zablah, Bellenger, & Johnston (2004) suggesting that it is a combination of strategy, processes, philosophy, capability and IT. The objective of this article is to review dominant organisational logic and its impact on market orientation climate/culture in order to call for research into their effects on CRM programmes. Boulding and colleagues crystallise multiple conceptualisations of CRM to deliver the following definition:

Frow and Payne (2009) offer an evolved definition which outlines the differences between CRM and relationship marketing and stresses the cross-functional nature of CRM and its focus on efficient value creation, however Boulding et al.’s (2005) definition is preferred in this work because it adopts the terminology ‘dual’ rather than ‘co-creation’ of value which allows for subsequent debate on the nature of value creation.