Sustainability and customer relationship management: current state of research and future research opportunities

Abstract

As recent years have seen an on-going discussion in science and industry about customer relationship management on the one hand and sustainability on the other hand, the synthesis of both trends sustainability and customer relationship management is gaining increasing importance. Within the multiplicity of scientific publications exploring sustainability in customer-related areas, this paper providfes an overview on the current state of research on sustainability-oriented customer relationship management. We analyse the present literature predominately with regard to the core areas of CRM, i.e. marketing, sales and service. It becomes evident that almost no research takes an integrated perspective on what shapes sustainability activities targeted at the customer and analyses how customers and sustainability interdigitate. As hardly any research has dealt with the comprehensive concept of sustainability and customer relationship management we furthermore deduce future research opportunities. Thereby, we analyse what enables and empowers sustainability and customer relationship management initiatives and how these can be further advanced and improved.