A Customer-Centric View of the Importance and Value of CRM Elements

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of what customers value in terms of the elements of customer relationship management, and how respondents can be grouped base on their answers. This was done by conducting a choice-based conjoint study, which was formulated based on a customer relationship management scale by Sin et al. (2005) on a proportional stratified sample of the customer base of Digia Plc, a large Finnish IT company. After the conjoint study, respondents were segmented through a k-means cluster analysis.

Based on the study, it is evident that customers place the largest relative importance on the attribute “Key Customer Focus” and gain the highest utility from industry specific configurations, although there are slight deviations of preferences in terms of different clusters. These findings are in line with previous customer-centric research in other fields. In addition, as customer assign at least a moderate level of importance to all attributes, this study supports existing CRM studies highlighting the importance of holistic CRM. Finally, the lowest level of importance gained by the attribute “CRM Organization” is not in line with existing literature and therefore demonstrates the importance of a customer-centric view.

This study offers a unique perspective into the Finnish information technology markets, as the one of the first customer-centric studies concerning CRM elements within a larger framework.