Customer Relationship Management: A Literature Review Approach

Abstract

This paper reviews the literature of CRM definitions in order to highlight the impact and the confusion around definitions of CRM. It is emerging the new perspectives in Customer relationship Management. It addresses some issues in the literature review, which constitutes a significant difficulty in the CRM adopting process. The numerous CRM definitions, the advancement in technology and customer knowledge emerging new perspectives in CRM. Content Analysis is carried out to summarize the most features of CRM definitions in Marketing, Relationship Marketing, Management, and Information Systems within ten different classifications which shows the diverging aspects of CRM definitions. A voluminous literature review has been accumulated and categorized into ten categories. The CRM definitions and categories are reviewed and listed in chronological order in Appendix-A. The paper introduces several fresh perspectives for the diversity of CRM definitions and shows CRM as a comprehensive, integrated framework around all aspects of the organization as well as customers’ lifestyles. The list of CRM definitions could provide a great help for academics as well as practitioners in the field of CRM.