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Electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) is seen to arise from the consolidation of traditional CRM with the e-business applications marketplace and has created a flurry of activity among companies. eCRM is the proverbial double-edged sword, presenting both opportunities and challenges for companies considering its adoption and implementation. This paper explores the marketing opportunities eCRM creates for companies such as enhanced customer interactions and relationships as well as personalisation options, all of which are potential sources of competitive advantage. It also explores the challenges confronting companies implementing eCRM such as managing an on-line channel, data integration issues and information technology (IT) architecture challenges. Directions for future research are also suggested.
Introduction
Customer relationship management (CRM) is about identifying a company's best customers and maximising the value from them by satisfying and retaining them. As a business philosophy CRM is seen to be firmly rooted in the concept of relationship marketing, which is aimed at improving long-run profitability by shifting from transaction based marketing to customer retention through effective management of customer relationships (Christopher et al., 1991). Recently it has been acknowledged that company relationships with customers can be greatly improved by employing information technology (Karimi et al., 2001; Ryals and Payne, 2001) which can facilitate and enhance customer relationships in various ways but mainly enables companies to attain customisation, which is the essence of a customer-centric organisation (Stefanou et al., 2003).
In this context CRM has emerged as the ideal vehicle for implementing relationship marketing within companies, with some practitioners suggesting that CRM provides a platform for the operational manifestation of relationship marketing (Plakoyiannaki and Tzokas, 2002). For many organisations the most obvious way to implement CRM is through the use of software applications in the form of electronic customer relationship management (eCRM) technology.
This type of CRM software provides the functionality that enables a firm to make the customer the focal point of all organisational decisions (Nemati et al., 2003) and innovations in such technology and the Internet are just some of several factors that now make relationships through one-to-one initiatives a reality (Chen and Popovich, 2003). The Internet has allowed new patterns of intermediation to emerge, allowing firms to adopt CRM to focus on effective customer relationship management as well as harnessing...