Firm performance through social Customer Relationship Management: Evidence from small and medium enterprises

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of social customer relationship management (CRM) adoption on firm performance in small and medium enterprises (SMEs) context. Accordingly, we develop a new adoption-performance model for social CRM strategy at the organization level. The proposed model of this study links technological, organizational, environmental and process factors to social CRM adoption and performance. The proposed hypotheses were verified by using structural equation modeling on a dataset of 240 SMEs across Kuala Lumper, the capital city of Malaysia. The results revealed that top management support, IT/IS knowledge of employee, cost, relative advantage, compatibility, customer pressure and competitive pressure are important drivers for social CRM adoption. Finally, this study confirms that there is a significant relationship between social CRM adoption and SMEs performance.