As competition is getting intensive, companies try to hold their current customers by investing more money and efforts on CRM activities. They provide various benefits for their customer to keep them and increase their loyalty. However, many companies...
As competition is getting intensive, companies try to hold their current customers by investing more money and efforts on CRM activities. They provide various benefits for their customer to keep them and increase their loyalty. However, many companies want to know how effective their CRM activities are. In order to investigate how effective the companies’ different CRM activities are, we investigate how customers perceive the different benefits provided by companies and how much they affect on their loyalty.
We categorize the benefits that companies provide for their customer as their CRM activities into four different types of customer benefits such as social customer benefits, psychological customer benefits, economic customer benefits and customization benefits. We investigate into the effects of different customer benefits and we also analyze how different the effects of customer benefits are depending on the types of industries and even on the involvement level, relationship types, and customer’s acceptance level of risks.
The results of study indicated that four types of CRM activities had a positive effect on the perceived relationship investment efforts and CRM outcomes, respectively. Judging from the influence of the four types of activities on the perceived relationship investment efforts, the psychological customer benefits including confidence with sales persons, comfort of service provided, provision of exact products or service were most influencing. Then, as a result of analysis, the order of influence appeared customization customer benefits first, economical customer benefits second, and social customer benefits last. From the aspect of companies, the higher the level of perceived customer management activities increased in terms of the CRM outcomes providing substantial assistance, the more positively it contributed to the outcomes.
Firstly, the effect of four types of CRM activities on the level of perceived relationship investment efforts according to the level of involvement being examined, it was found that they showed no particular difference. But considering the influence of the level of perceived relationship investment efforts on the companies' CRM outcomes, there appeared some differences according to the level of involvement. In case of the products or service of low-level involvement rather than those of highlevel involvement, the level of perceived relationship investment efforts had greater effect on CRM outcomes. Inferring from these results of study, the more the companies providing the products or service of low-level involvement increased the customers' perception of relationship investment efforts through the CRM activities, the more effectively they improved the outcomes.
Secondly, examining the difference in the customer relationship pattern according to the type of transactions, that is, whether one-shot or continuous, the perceived relationship investment efforts were more highly evaluated at the continuous transaction in case of the social customer benefits, while in case of the economical customer benefits the perceived relationship investment efforts were more highly evaluated at the one-shot transaction. Besides, it was found that with regard to the influence of perceived relationship investment efforts on the CRM outcomes, one-shot transaction had greater influence. Therefore, the companies providing oneshot type of products or service could achieve more effective outcome from the economical benefits-based customer management program.
Thirdly, looking closely into the customer's acceptance level of risks, the economical customer benefits which could be obtained from a continuous transaction appeared to have a greater influence on the customers who had a strong inclination to evade dangers which could be incurred in choosing new products or service. But it was found that the CRM outcomes according to the level of perceived relationship investment efforts had a greater effect on those customers who pursued newer things with a motive to improve.
Fourthly, it was classified into four types according to the level of involvement and type of customer relationship to examine the difference of companies' CRM activities in the level of perceived relationship investment efforts and CRM outcomes. In case of the low involvement and one-shot transaction, the social and economical customer benefits had no influence on the perceived relationship investment efforts, while in case of low involvement and continuous transaction, the economical customer benefits were insignificant in the relationship investment efforts.
Finally, we examine the moderator effects among the four CRM benefits and perceived relationship investment efforts depending on the types of industries and personal characteristics. We found that moderator variables are operated by modifying the influence the form of the relationship between the predictor and criterion variables.
These results of study showed that the CRM activities had, in general, a positive effect on the companies' perceived relationship investment efforts and their outcomes as in the previous studies, but the companies should selectively concentrate their CRM activities on the more effective customer benefits considering the involvement level, relationship types, customer’s acceptance level of risks, and moderator effects along with the industry where they belong.