Electronic platforms provide many advantages both customers and companies due to development of communication technology. Today almost every people have smartphones and tablets. Thus mobile customer relationship management became an significant concept for generating long-term relationships and increasing customer satisfaction, retention and loyalty. In addition companies use mobile CRM to facilitate salespeople for better performance in marketing activities. M-CRM offers interactive relationships between firms and companies. In this study, we define what is customer relationship management and origins of CRM. After that we stated electronic customer relationship management concept and finally we mentioned about mobile CRM especially benefits and characteristics of it.
TopEvolution Of Customer Relationship Management
The roots of CRM can be traced back to the term of relationship marketing (RM) (Zablah et al, 2004). Since the competition has changed and structural changes in operations have led to the emergence of the relationship concept for generating long-term relationships among customers and suppliers. Due to the globalisation of business, internationalisation, information technology progression, shorter product life cycles, and the evolving recognition of the relationship between customer retention and profitability (Morgan and Hunt, 1994; Zineldin and Jonsson, 2000; Chandra and Kumar, 2000; Sahay, 2003; Stefanou et al., 2003; cited in Osarenkhoe and Bennani, 2007).
According to Parvatiyar and Sheth (1995), “developing customer relationships has historical antecedents going back into the pre-industrial era. Much of it was due to direct interaction between producers of agricultural products and their consumers. Similarly, artisans often developed customized products for each customer. Such direct interaction led to relational bonding between the producer and the consumer. It was only after the advent of mass production in the industrial era and the advent of middlemen that interaction between producers and consumers became less frequent leading to transaction oriented marketing” (Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2001).
After industrialization and mass production, companies have lost their control over their customers and it became very hard to manage and remember informations about on a large number of consumers. But parallelly advances in information technology, computer technology and wireless communication led to start new possibilities to companies for customer relations.
Recently, several elements have contributed to thedevelopment and evolution of customer relationship management rapidly. These elements are the changes in intermediation process in many industries due to the progression of advanced computer and telecommunication technologies that allow producers to directly communicate with customers. For instance, in many industries such as the airline, banking, insurance, computer software, or household appliances industries and even consumables, the de-intermediation process is fast changing the nature of marketing and consequently making relationship marketing more popular. Databases and direct marketing instrumentsprovide these industries the means topersonalize their marketing endeavours. (Parvatiyar and Sheth, 2001).