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Other Areas Impacted by Customer Management

Site: Saylor Academy
Course: BUS630: Consumer Behavior
Book: Other Areas Impacted by Customer Management
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Date: Wednesday, 21 May 2025, 11:16 PM

Description

Customer management impacts areas outside of traditional marketing. Read this study to learn how customer management affects entrepreneurial marketing.

Table of contents

Abstract

Entrepreneurship is one of the business forces with the greatest power to transform today's society, due to its ability to discover and take advantage of new opportunities to satisfy customer new and changing needs and expectations. Customer relationship management (CRM) has proved to be both a highly influential business management strategy and a powerful business management technology solution, with a particularly relevant impact in the area of entrepreneurship. CRM has helped drive growth and future expectations and has had excellent results in terms of return on investment wherever it has been implemented. An exhaustive review of previously published findings in a specific subject area can uncover new lines of research. This paper uses semi-systematic review to the study of the reality of the link between CRM and entrepreneurial marketing in business. This approach is used to comprehensively describe the state of the art of the impact that CRM can have in the modern business environment, through the empowerment of entrepreneurial marketing. In a structured manner, the present paper reviews the 86 most relevant studies of how CRM affects entrepreneurial marketing policy development through its alignment with relationship marketing and customer-centric business models. The growing use of CRM in companies is one of the pillars of technological and social change in entrepreneurship, being a clear example of how big data can benefit society. The study focuses on the period from 2015 to 2019.

Source: Vicente Guerola-Navarro, Hermenegildo Gil-Gomez, Raul Oltra-Badenes, and Pedro Soto-Acosta, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11365-022-00800-x
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Introduction

In a globalized commercial world such as the current one, markets are dynamic and changing, and the customer lies at the beginning and end of the value chain. One of the greatest values that entrepreneurship provides in an environment like this is the ability of entrepreneurs to take advantage of opportunities and discover new ways to meet customer expectations, and thereby transform the world in general and the market in general particular, all due to the unstoppable process of digital transformation. One of the consequences of globalization is the greater ability of customers to access both information and the acquisition of products and services offered even beyond the borders of countries. This means that the needs, desires, and expectations of customers are changing and increasingly demanding, with which the market has become so dynamic that only companies that manage to adapt to said dynamism survive. And for this it is necessary to invest in innovation and development, and to have an entrepreneurial spirit that is open to discovering and taking advantage of new opportunities and ways of satisfying those needs, desires and expectations. Entrepreneurship thus becomes one of the engines of change and transformation of society, which justifies the growing research interest in this area.

The area of entrepreneurship is being the center of study for various researchers from different perspectives due to its important role as an engine of economic and social development, reaching the point of being able to affirm that the entrepreneur is the single most important player in a modern economy. It was not too long ago that the field of entrepreneurship was considered little more than an applied trade as opposed to an academic area of study and there was no research to be accomplished because it was thought that those who could not attend college would simply "practice" the concept of new business start-up. The role of entrepreneurship in society has changed drastically in the last quarter century, to the point that, in recent years, entrepreneurship has been viewed as the engine of economic and social development due to the power it has developed to provide a better quality of life to society. society through its impetus and its transformative potential. Entrepreneurs are those who work on transformative environments, discover or identify opportunities, or create and exploit them to add value to society. Entrepreneurship is nowadays regarded as the study of the processes of identifying, evaluating, developing and exploiting opportunities, as well as of the resources and conditioners that influence these processes, as part of one of the most powerful tools that business has for bringing better customer experiences.

Nowadays, the customer is also considered the engine of business success. In such a world, companies must have the right tools to collect the necessary management information so that they can meet the needs and expectations of customers and thereby mold their productive, logistic, and commercial efforts to match these needs and expectations. This makes the development of entrepreneurial businesses especially difficult, which is why it is shown that all those tools and technological solutions that can have a high impact on customer management and entrepreneurial marketing are key, an area in which Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) has proven to have a special impact.

In the current business environment, and especially evident in its entrepreneurial part, where the client appears as the key and determining figure for any decision making, it is essential to evaluate the impact that any strategy and tool may have on the management of the client's knowledge available to the company, in order to be able to adapt its commercial and marketing actions towards the most efficient and appropriate target. Marketing (understood as the management of commercial relationships with customers within the market), and more specifically entrepreneurial marketing (as a powerful association of marketing tools and the innovative and transforming power of entrepreneurship) is therefore one of the great forces that promote the economic development of society. Along these lines, CRM has emerged in recent decades as the most widely disseminated strategy and management tool in terms of a tool designed and focused on managing the powerful marketing strategies through the management of the relationships with customers, and consistently and efficiently managing information and actions aimed at the clients, which is especially important in the field of entrepreneurship. This study tries precisely to analyze the previous and relevant studies that unify these important aspects of business management: the management of customer relationships, and marketing as a strategy for reaching customers, specifically in the field of entrepreneurship. The ultimate objective is to identify the dimensions that other previous studies have highlighted as more relevant and with the greatest impact in these fields of business management, to draw conclusions from the results obtained, and to propose future lines of research consistent with the results obtained.

For most entrepreneurial marketers, marketing is a social, personal activity and not only an organizational function. Marketing to achieve growth is what many entrepreneurs are passionate about. Marketing from the perspective of an entrepreneur is not just one of the functions of the business that must be carried out such as accounting, finance, or HRM; but is often considered by entrepreneurs as the core function of the firm. Regarding marketing area impactful tools, Customer relationship management (CRM) is one of the leading business strategies and business management tools), and it has been shown to be crucial in developing sales, marketing, and production planning strategies. This key role of CRM is a consequence of the customer-related information that can be obtained from all CRM sources of value, in the sense of providing the overall efforts of companies with the appropriate sense of customer service and customer needs. CRM refers to both a customer relationship management philosophy and the technological solutions or methodologies required for its implementation because each tool and each level of implementation of CRM is a true reflection of the CRM philosophy or strategy itself. Value chain management, together with the resulting strategy for producing goods and providing services, thus becomes meaningful and effective when it is based on the knowledge of the vital business reality of customers. This feature is one of the most highly valued characteristics of CRM's action points.

Menguzzato and Renau established the principles that should be followed by business decision makers of successful firms that seek to achieve high levels of business performance and endure over time as model companies and shining examples of business success. In this sense, the presence and relevance of entrepreneurial marketing as part of business success is crucial to the study of any business management methodology. Therefore, any tool such as CRM, which supports the collection of customer management information and its use in planning strategies, is essential in management.

Hills et al. points out that entrepreneurs are characterized by creating and exploiting turbulent markets, something that other economic actors tend not to do. Economic theory suggests that entrepreneurs are seen as creating imbalances by introducing innovations to drive markets or as firms that attempt to move economies away from equilibrium by exploiting previously unidentified opportunities. The use of knowledge management and innovation, empowered by the use of CRM technologocal solutions, to create entrepreneurial rent has important implications for marketing. In this way, entrepreneurial marketing proves not to be the direct consequence of specific managerial decisions but more the outcome of entrepreneurial processes and culture. The aim of studying the reality of CRM through scientific research in the areas of business, sociology, and technology is to effectively demonstrate that CRM is one of the most powerful business tools for managing sales, entrepreneurial marketing, and services.

In this paper, and during the following sections, the impact of CRM on entrepreneurial marketing will be studied. First, a Literature Review section is presented in which what has been ascertained from previous studies on the relationship between CRM and marketing in general is referenced, particularizing on the entrepreneurial aspect of business marketing. In the following sections, the methodology followed in the study is explained, as well as the results obtained and the conclusions derived from this scientific study.

Literature review

Marketing is one of the areas in which the expectation of impact is greatest through the use of CRM technological solutions and the culture of customer relationship management itself. Specifically, and within the general concept of marketing, entrepreneurial marketing is one of the areas with the greatest projection both at the business level and at the research level. This section initially analyzes the concept and relevance of entrepreneurial marketing, and then the concept and evolution of CRM solutions, to later proceed to establish the marketing approach to the CRM customer-centric management theory, all of it as previous stages for finally stating the state of the art on the impact of CRM on entrepreneurial marketing specifically.


Entrepreneurial marketing

Marketing is the discipline concerned with studying the behavior of markets and the needs of consumers. Entrepreneurial marketing, as part of the global discipline of marketing, but with the special characteristics of entrepreneurial agents, analyzes companies' commercial management in attracting, capturing, and retaining end customers by fulfilling their wishes and resolving their problems all with the aim of transforming society by discovering opportunities and paths not explored by other business agents. Regarding entrepreneurship, entrepreneurs' tactics for using the marketing strategies differ from the traditional business brand, where product development, pricing, promotion, and distribution are the key marketing mix pillars. Entrepreneurs prefer direct interchanges and building personal relationships, being the entrepreneurs' tactics clearly based on personal observation and contact information, rather than formal research and global marketing initiatives.

Kraus et al. establishes that, within the business field of discovering and taking advantage of new business opportunities that can transform society and improve the overall customer experience, entrepreneurial marketing can be understood as the combination of marketing with an entrepreneurial mindset, which leads to a definition of entrepreneurial marketing as the "organizational function of marketing by taking into account innovativeness, risk taking, pro-activeness and the pursuit of opportunities without regard for the resources currently controlled". Smart and Conant suggests that entrepreneurial firms have a different set of marketing competencies that typically includes a superior understanding of customer needs, market trends, and market positioning. Hills et al. indicate that entrepreneurs engage in marketing in ways that differ the classical marketing theory.

Jones and Rowley suggest that marketing in SMEs is intertwined with other activities and behaviors in small business and argue that to understand marketing in SMEs it is essential to understand its context, specifically in relation to customer engagement, the innovation. and business approaches to marketing. Given the relevance of the interaction between entrepreneurship and marketing, the concept of "entrepreneurial business" has gained significance in the research and business sphere. While some authors argue that entrepreneurial business is important to all organizations (large and small), there is a general recognition that the concept is particularly appropriate for the context of small businesses.

Stokes establishes how marketing adapts to entrepreneurial contexts and proposes a conceptual model of the marketing processes undertaken by entrepreneurs. This study explores how entrepreneurial marketing differs from traditional marketing theory, concluding that entrepreneurs tend to be innovation-oriented, driven by new ideas and an intuitive feel for the market, rather than rigorous evaluation of business needs.


Customer relationship management (CRM)

The origins of CRM date back to the 1970s, when CRM emerged as a technological solution for companies to automate the management of the internal sales force. Recent bibliometric studies assessing the evolution of the hubs of productivity and influence in terms of the eminent authors, countries, and institutions in the field of CRM have shown the exponential growth of interest in CRM since 2010, being a definite complement for the recent extensive literature reviews performed about CRM impact on entrepreneurial marketing and innovation areas.

CRM is one of the most modern business management tools to establish effective channels and methods of customer-centric information management, in conjunction with Enterprise Resource Planning solutions. Its primary goal is to improve organizational performance to enable firms to achieve better business results. This modern approach differs considerably from earlier approaches such as the one described by Chen and Wu, who proposed a basic definition of CRM as "a combination of people, processes and technology that seeks to understand a company's customers". This definition has become obsolete given the recent evolution of CRM tools toward a global vision of comprehensive management of information in relation to customer knowledge to achieve more effective interactions with clients. Modern studies of business management and the use of information technology consider the necessity of the comprehensive management of key information for business decision makers. Payne and Frow established a global conceptual framework for this modern approach to the comprehensive management of customer information and expectations, leading to successful decision making and the planning of coordinated and effective entrepreneurial marketing strategies to attract and retain the company's most profitable customers. For this purpose, CRM is a fundamental tool.

Recent studies corroborate the importance of CRM as a key tool in the digital transformation of society and the current globalized and dynamic market. The role of CRM is stressed not only because of its potential to improve current management (or exploitation), but also because of its potential in developing innovation (or exploration) capacity. This potential makes CRM one of the most powerful management technology solutions in the field of modern business management.


Marketing approach to the CRM customer-centric management theory

Having established the importance of CRM as a business management technology solution with a major impact in the field of marketing, and especially on entrepreneurial marketing, it is important to identify the marketing approach that is most closely aligned with the CRM customer-centric management theory. This marketing approach is used in this study to ensure that the results are consistent and relevant for future studies. Of all current theories and trends in marketing, the definition of relationship marketing (or relational marketing) is of greatest interest because of its close match with CRM objectives. Specifically, relationship marketing is defined as the integrated effort to identify and maintain a customer network, with the aim of continually reinforcing it for the benefit of both parties, through individualized contacts and interactions that generate value over time.

This concept of relational marketing is especially important in the area of entrepreneurship, since maintaining a long-term relationship with loyal customers empirically shows that it favors the creation of a financial cushion and a culture of confidence in the future of the company, which they are the basis for every entrepreneurial agent to continue taking risks and facing new challenges. In short, a loyal customer base allows entrepreneurs to be what they are, agents who pour all their energy and capacity for innovation into transforming society through previously undiscovered or untapped opportunities. Loyal customers are defined as those who always buy a specific type of item in the same store, who always consume the same brands, and who always carry out their business operations through the same entities. In terms of its basic principles, relationship marketing:

  • is based on segmented or customized marketing,

  • tries to generate long-term benefits,

  • represents a commitment to the development of a mutually beneficial relationship continued over time,

  • is based on continuous improvement and the creation and contribution of value to the client,

  • orients and coordinates the entire company toward the client,

  • requires complex and continuous internal marketing,

  • directs the training, motivation, and evaluation of employees toward increasing customer satisfaction,

  • seeks customer satisfaction with each relationship through an emphasis on customer service.

In the entrepreneurial business environment, there is therefore a link between CRM technology solutions, relationship marketing based on customer centered focus and business success. To achieve the expected benefits of relationship marketing, CRM is a key tool for business management. In a globalized, dynamic, and changing market, like today's, the principles of relationship marketing are critical to the success of any entrepreneurial marketing strategy adopted by any company hoping to succeed. CRM is one of the technologies that has aroused the most interest in the last decade. This interest is reflected by numerous bibliometric studies. Its market share has increased dramatically in recent years, especially with the development of cloud computing platforms. CRM is a technology that has only relatively recently attracted interest. Also, its scope of development is closely linked to relationship marketing. Therefore, it was considered both interesting and novel to conduct further research on this subject, hence the motivation for the present literature review.


State of the art on the impact of CRM on entrepreneurial marketing

Given the relative newness of CRM technology solutions as a focus of scientific research, there are few studies of the state of the art in terms of its impact on the current business reality. Following the theory of the duality and complementary nature of the qualitative and quantitative studies of the realities under investigation, the state of the art should first present quantitative analysis of the publications and citations in this area and should then offer in-depth analysis of the most relevant publications.

The first approach to the study of the state of the art is to examine the quantitative reality of the subject. This approach is reflected in CRM bibliometric studies such as the study by Tsai and the more recent study by Guerola-Navarro et al., who reviewed the most important and well-recognized databases in scientific research to graphically analyze the evolution of the number of publications and citations and determine the hubs of greatest productivity and influence. The origin (author, country, entity, etc.) of the research articles stored in these databases was considered in terms of productivity. The origin of articles whose publications had most citations were considered to be of greatest influence.

Regarding the second, this approach to the state of the art of CRM, scholars have conducted systematic reviews of the literature on CRM, identifying lines of investigation that have been proposed for future research. Ngai reviewed the academic literature on CRM from 1992 to 2002, providing a comprehensive bibliography and proposing a method of classifying the literature. Subsequently Ngai et al. built an academic database of literature for the period 2000 to 2006 and proposed a classification scheme to classify these articles. More recently, Soltani and Navimipour systematically reviewed the state-of-the-art literature on CRM mechanisms and offered recommendations for future research.

Considering previous research and the intention to establish a complete state of the art for CRM technology, there is a lack of studies that specifically address the entrepreneurial marketing side of CRM. The decisive influence of a good entrepreneurial marketing strategy on successful business activity has been verified. Similarly, CRM has also been cited as one of the most relevant technological solutions in obtaining the key management information for the development of such a marketing strategy. Therefore, a study that reflects the state of the art of CRM in the specific field of entrepreneurship marketing can prove valuable for subsequent research. This future research on the role of CRM in improving marketing strategies is expected to be vital to enhance company performance.

Therefore, through an extensive literature review, this paper complements the existing bibliometric studies of CRM by adopting a semi-systematic review to studying the business reality of CRM, focusing specifically on the entrepreneurial marketing side. This approach, together with the quantitative approach of bibliometric analysis of the productivity and influence of the scientific research community, establishes a complete state of the art that can be used to support future research on the impact of CRM as a tool and its marketing applications in the modern business environment.

This paper thus offers a comprehensive review of the literature on the potential of applying CRM technology solutions through their impact on companies' management of entrepreneurial marketing strategies. All research articles published since the birth of CRM to the present day (end of 2019) are reviewed. This paper has the following structure. First, the research methodology is described. Then, the method to classify articles on CRM in entrepreneurial marketing is presented. Next, these articles on entrepreneurial marketing in CRM are reviewed and analyzed. Finally, conclusions are drawn in relation to future research on CRM and its impact on marketing management.