CRM's Influence on Entrepreneurial Marketing

Research methodology

There are several types of literature review research. However, certain elements are common to all of these, namely analysis of the most important papers on a given topic of study, categorization of these studies under the proposed taxonomy or conceptual framework, and the establishment of the basis for the future research agenda. Snyder notes that a "literature review can broadly be described as a more or less systematic way of collecting and synthesizing previous research," raising questions about the quality and trustworthiness of classical literature review studies and establishing guidelines for new methods. Systematic review papers may be of several types: structured reviews focusing on widely used methods, theories, and constructs; framework-based studies; hybrid-narrative studies with a framework for setting the future research agenda; theory-based reviews; meta-analyses; bibliometric reviews; and reviews aiming at model or framework development. Torraco and Callahan argued that an integrative literature review should offer a research agenda, a classification of concepts, conceptual frameworks as the way of thinking resulting from the study, and the basis for developing future research. In line with the indications of Snyder, the present study follows a semi-systematic review, with the following four phases: 1) design, 2) conduct, 3) analyze, and 4) structure and write the review. The elements followed in each phase of this study are detailed below.

Phase 1. Design the review

The purpose of this study is to categorize the most important papers on CRM and entrepreneurial marketing. The goal is to provide a map of studies and conclusions that can help establish a focused research agenda. The purpose of the study is to support the empirical testing of models of the impact of CRM and entrepreneurial marketing on firm performance. Previous bibliometric studies show that CRM is a business management technology that has been growing since 2000. This growth has been especially pronounced in the last decade, particularly in the last five years, with the development of cloud computing platforms. Therefore, the present review was deemed necessary. The potential audience for this study is growing as it is shown in the bibliometric studies confirming the growing interest and influence of papers on CRM. The same growing interest is shown in the literature around entrepreneurial marketing, as one of the most powerful forces to transform the society and the market itself. The search strategy is based on bibliometric studies carried out with the same research criteria. This study follows and complements these previous studies by describing the state of the art. Therefore, as explained in this section, the Web of Science Core Collection database for the period 2015 to 2019 was used.

Phase 2. Conduct the review

The present study provides a review of the literature on the interaction between CRM and entrepreneurial marketing. Therefore, the selection procedure was designed to identify articles based on all the keywords related to these two concepts that provide meaningful results. Certain adjustments were foreseen to eliminate articles that were not impactful or whose content was not intrinsically relevant to the study. The selected articles were carefully read to ensure the quality, representativeness, and applicability of the study in the scope described in the future research agenda.

Phase 3. Analyze

In order to obtain the needing information for carrying out this study, three sources have been explored: complementary bibliometric studies, previous literature reviews, and methodological studies of literature review processes.

Phase 4. Structure and write the review

The paper begins with the description of the scope and objective of the study, followed by the description of the methodological basis followed on it. The information regarding the impact of CRM and entrepreneurial marketing has been reviewed, considering Its importance, representativeness, and relevance for future research. The conclusions are presented with the aim to bring the most interesting points to other researchers and to open new researching lines in the future.

Following these propositions, the starting point has been to determine which database to use to identify scientific research articles published in prestigious journals. The database chosen in this study was the Web of Science (WoS) Core Collection, which is owned by Thomson Reuters. The journal’s own page contained the citations from any journal, but we only wanted to take into account the citations from the most relevance journals in the research fields, and this was why we have used only this database. WoS core collection covers most of the known scientific disciplines, hosting more than 50,000,000 papers across more than 15,000 journals. In the field of scientific research, it is generally assumed that WoS contains only high-quality journals characterized by timely publication and review of papers, scientific criteria for the peer review process, and broad dissemination through the Internet and the most widely used channels for the publication of scientific research. Therefore, WoS was considered the most appropriate database for this study, both due to the specific interest of our study, as well as the prestige, completeness and relevance of this database in the scientific field.

In the WoS refine categories, there is no specific section for CRM and entrepreneurial marketing. Therefore, the search had to be refined by filtering the results depending on the primary focus of the journals and the papers included in these journals. The Web of Science Core Collection database was the core database used for this study, as it has been explained previously. The initial period used in the literature search for this study was 1900 to 2019, with the intention of covering all completed and closed years in terms of publications (at the time of the study, the year 2019 was not yet closed and it continued to receive publications). It was based on the search strings "customer relationship management", ("Customer relationship management*"), "CRM" ("CRM*"), "entrepreneurial marketing" ("entrepreneurial marketing*"), "entrepreneurship" ("entrepreneurship*") and "marketing" ("marketing*"). With these refine filters, it has been observed that the database obtained contained a sample of the entire spectrum and range of topics that were intended to be analyzed in this study, so it was not considered necessary to expand, reduce, or change these parameters for others (in fact, it has been found that introducing other parameters deviated the database from the sample that was intended to be used in the research). The search returned 1,034 results from the Web of Science Core Collection in these areas for this timeframe.

To consider the most relevant research papers for a comprehensive literature review, an important field in WoS is Document Type. The document types of interest in this study were article, review, and letter. The original data set of 1034 was reduced to only articles, reviews, and letters, being the number of results of the search reduced to 646 articles.

The focus of this study is the relationship between CRM management technology solutions and the management of marketing strategies, all within the scope of business management. Therefore, filters were applied to select articles in the WoS categories of Business, Management, Operations Research Management Science, Computer Science Information Systems, Information Science Library Science, Computer Science Interdisciplinary Applications, and Economics. This process gave a total of 541 results.

Analysis of the timeframe of previous literature reviews shows that the most recent state of the art was created in 2016 by Soltani and Navimipour. Therefore, to ensure the originality of the articles and choose the correct timeframe in this study, these results were filtered for the years 2015 to 2019. The reasons for selecting this timeframe are given below.

• The period 2015 to 2019 covers the last five years for which data are available. Therefore, this period best reflects the most up-to-date approaches and trends in this area.

• The bibliometric study by Guerola-Navarro et al. to examine the evolution and trends in scientific research on CRM shows that the recent rise in the number of publications on CRM (and, by extension, the interest in this topic) began in 2015.

• After applying this filter in WoS, the search returned 197 articles, covering the type, content, and magnitude of research database that was looked for the research.

The full text of these articles was reviewed to eliminate those that were unrelated to the application of CRM marketing tools in the planning and development of business marketing strategies. All articles where the primary focus was not the inextricable relationship between CRM and marketing were eliminated, considering not only the existence of a marketing module within the CRM technological solution itself but also (and even more importantly) the impact of CRM strategy on the development of effective marketing strategies and policies.

Thus, the number of relevant articles was 86 following the elimination of those that were not considered relevant to this study or that were not considered important articles in relation to the application of marketing techniques to CRM. These 86 articles were classified according to the dimensions of CRM and its elements and according to the dimensions of marketing and its elements.

Other items were discarded for the following reasons (research studies that appeared as search results in the WoS Core Collection with the strings used in this study, but that for different reasons have been analyzed but are not part of the sample from which the results and conclusions were obtained of this study):

• Some articles were found in WoS using the filters for this study. However, their content was not entirely relevant to the concepts represented by these filters. Examples of these articles are those by Hu et al., Naudé and Sutton-Brady, Skarmeas et al., Mosavi and Afsar, and Di Benedetto.

• Some articles were relevant to CRM but not to entrepreneurial marketing. Examples are those by Cricelli et al., Cruz and Vasconcelos, Garrido-Moreno et al., and Mohammadhossein et al.

• Some articles were relevant to entrepreneurial marketing but not to CRM. Examples are those by Coda and de Castro, Levin et al., Mehrabi et al., and Alnawas and Hemsley-Brown.

• Some articles were mostly technical and focused more on the technological side of the CRM tool than on its impact on business management. Examples of these articles are those by Cu et al., Yang and Shieh, Ullah et al., and Ivan and Popa.

• Some articles focused exclusively on applicability to a specific environment or situation and were not general enough to be extrapolated and to be considered representative of a general case. Examples are the articles by Sota et al., Junaid et al., Rahimi and Gunlu, and Siems et al.
  

With the results of the literature review and with the bibliometric research, it is hoped that the most relevant areas of research interest and focus can be detected. The future research agenda will be defined by these research trends. It will help reveal the most relevant and influential studies of the expected benefits of the implementation and use of CRM in the field of entrepreneurship. This study aims to achieve a model to measure the impact of the use of CRM and entrepreneurial marketing on firm performance.. For this purpose, it is crucial to have a study of the state of the art as a starting point. This study of the state of the art consists of a solid bibliometric study and a thorough literature review.

Following this description of the selection of these articles, the methodology that was used to classify them is now developed. The first step to classifying the articles that explore the links between CRM and entrepreneurial marketing (i.e., the articles whose content is relevant to the present study) and to building a comprehensive state of the art was to identify the dimensions and elements that characterize CRM and those that characterize entrepreneurial marketing.

CRM dimensions

When performing an extensive search for previous studies of literature reviews or the creation of a state of the art of CRM, different CRM dimensions and elements can be used to classify the articles. The literature review shows that CRM can be defined in terms of four dimensions with the following elements:

1. Customer identification:

   1. Target customer analysis

   2. Customer segmentation

2. Customer attraction:

   1. Direct marketing

3. Customer retention:

   1. Loyalty programs

   2. One-to-one marketing

   3. Complaint management

4. Customer development:

   1. Customer lifetime value

   2. Upselling/cross-selling

   3. Market basket analysis

Ngai analyzed the concept of CRM as a tool to identify the most valuable clients, attract them as trusted clients, retain them with loyalty policies, and develop a lasting partnership with them. For this process, four dimensions are used: customer identification, customer attraction, customer retention, and customer development. These dimensions are a true reflection of the potential of CRM technology solutions to reinforce the business value chain based on knowledge of the needs and expectations of clients and to achieve the goal of customer satisfaction. This goal is client focused, and the needs of clients offer the starting point in this business value chain.

Kracklauer et al. defined customer identification as any effort by the company to turn as many individuals as possible into customers as per the business aims of the company for a given time and under given circumstances. This phase has two elements or stages that are central to its success in customer acquisition.

• Target customer analysis is where a company studies its capabilities and possibilities for development in the short and medium term, analyzes what its target market may look like based on its circumstances and surroundings, and identifies its target customer to direct its recruitment efforts.

• Customer segmentation is where a company tries to identify and analyze its target customers, and after establishing its global potential market, the company segments or divides its target market according to the characteristics of the homogeneous segments that are of interest for its commercial activity.

Customer attraction is defined as any effort by the company to get customers interested in the goods and services it offers. Customer attraction is the next step after segmentation during the previous step of customer identification. This stage consists of one primary activity.

• Direct marketing is the principal tool to overcome challenges and grasp opportunities associated with the need for customer attraction. Companies must address target audiences both directly and indirectly, always keeping in mind that reaching the right customers is the key to business success.

Customer retention is the most difficult objective to achieve in the current globalized, changing, and dynamic market. Econometric studies show that it is considerably more efficient for companies to retain their best existing clients than to secure new clients whose long-term performance is unknown. Establishing the fundamental elements for customer retention is therefore crucial for business success.

• Loyalty programs involve creating a global structured plan composed of synchronous actions in which all efforts are focused on retaining the best clients, especially through customer service and support programs.

• One-to-one marketing is important because in markets as competitive as today’s globalized environment, personalizing marketing efforts to suit the clients (or segment) that these efforts target is the only way to match marketing campaigns to customers and expected results.
  

• Complaint management is important because in the current market, customer retention is not viable without an adequate customer service and support policy. This policy describes how to accept, process, and respond to all feedback and complaints from customers.

Finally, customer development refers to all efforts to strengthen and develop commercial activity with long-term clients. This activity occurs through attempts to expand and strengthen profitable lines of business with existing loyal customers. Three key elements are considered at this stage.

• Customer lifetime value analysis refers to the prediction of the total net income a company ca.

• Upselling and cross-selling are promotion activities that aim at augmenting the number of associated or closely related services that a customer uses within the company.

• Market basket analysis means maximizing customer transaction intensity and value by discovering patterns in the purchase behavior of customers.

Each of these four dimensions of CRM has several elements, which are used in this study to classify the selected articles in the field of marketing in CRM.

Entrepreneurial marketing dimensions

Following the same research approach as for CRM, previous literature reviews or state-of-the-art analyses of marketing and entrepreneurial marketing, specifically relationship marketing, were reviewed. Interest in this form of marketing is due to its growing importance, its alignment with CRM technology solutions, and its efficiency, which has been shown in recent studies (as mentioned in the introduction).

Harker synthesized the definitions of relationship marketing. The following dimensions or conceptual categories and their corresponding elements were identified:

• Creation/birth: attracting, establishing, getting

• Development/develop: enhancing, strengthening

• Maintenance/maintain: sustaining, stability, keeping

• Interactive/interaction: exchanging, mutually, co-operating

• Long term/temporary: lasting, permanent, retaining

• Emotional content: commitment, trust, promises

• Output: profitable, rewarding, efficiency

Despite being the most extensive and most specific of any research on this topic, the aforementioned study is also the oldest. Therefore, these categories were taken as a conceptual reference, but a more recent study was sought to identify the dimensions that are most pertinent to the current economic and business environment.

Samiee and Walters studied and classified the most important articles on relationship management in an international context. This approach is especially interesting because the current market is characterized by increasing globalization. Therefore, the international business approach is considered up to date and relevant to this study. Samiee and Walters concluded that the following constructs can be used to classify articles (in order of appearance in the studied articles):

• Trust

• Power

• Commitment

• Conflict

• Relationship quality

• Reciprocity

• Investment in the relationship

• Information exchange

The third literature review considered on relationship marketing is the most recent one. Das presented an adaptation of the study by Samiee and Walters to a more up-to-date environment. This adaptation is concise and simple, reducing the categories under study to the following five constructs:

• Trust

• Commitment

• Cooperation

• Closeness

• Relationship quality

The list of constructs compiled by Das is the most recent list and is consistent and well aligned with that of Samiee and Walters. Thus, the dimensions defined by Das are used in this study. These dimensions are the most well recognized in the recent scientific research on relationship marketing. They are also accepted as suitable for the study of international business. Therefore, the marketing dimensions used in the classification of the selected articles are trust, commitment, cooperation, closeness, and relationship quality.

Trust depicts the concept of relationship management as emotional and behavioral, focusing on concepts such as bonding, empathy, reciprocity, and trust. This concept is linked to the current trend of customer-centric marketing and thus to CRM as a tool to achieve this goal.

Adamson et al. focused on the joint impact of a strategy combining trust and commitment on retail customer management, where the relationship with the customer and the customer service and support strategy is fundamental to business success.

Also central to the success of the business marketing strategy is the cooperation between the different components of the value chain, starting with clients and their needs and expectations, passing through all internal departments of the company including the outsourced external services (logistics, supply, etc.), and ending again with the client and client satisfaction.

Closeness refers to the interest and familiarity with which the company deals with clients. The aim is to meet their needs and expectations while giving them the highest degree of satisfaction possible, thereby establishing a long-term partnership that is beneficial for both customer and company.

The last dimension is relationship quality, which is the most general of all and involves characteristics of all the previous dimensions. It brings together all the efforts of the company (within its relationship marketing plan and strategy) to establish a relationship of trust, cooperation, customer service, and support that guarantees customer loyalty and a long-term partnership with customers.

Classification process

Once the dimensions of CRM and entrepreneurial marketing had been established, the articles were classified according to these dimensions and their elements. The first step was to read each article carefully and evaluate whether it was related to CRM. If the article was considered to be related to CRM, then the dimensions of CRM that were relevant to the study were identified. The second step was similar to the first step, except this time for entrepreneurial marketing. In this case, the dimensions of entrepreneurial marketing that were applicable to the study were identified. Once the dimensions of CRM and entrepreneurial marketing had been identified for each selected article, the third step was to organize the results in a table to analyze the results and draw useful conclusions for future entrepreneurial marketing studies in CRM.