Abstract/Description
Services marketing and CRM have generated a lot of interest within practicing managers as well as academicians. This paper aims to determine the commonalities in the two paradigms from the viewpoint of academicians as well as practitioners as previous studies indicated a gap regarding the importance being given to CRM as a new paradigm on one hand and its unsuccessful implementation status on the other hand. In order to achieve the above mentioned objectives, research was carried out in two phases. In phase one systematic review of eight Services Marketing and 9 CRM research papers was carried out in order to develop a framework of common activities of Services Marketing and CRM. In the Phase 2 of the research methodology, a questionnaire based survey was conducted to empirically test the logic that SM and CRM are the same and should not be treated as different. The framework developed from Phase 1 through pooling all the common activities from the two concepts of Services and CRM was utilized in developing the survey questionnaire to be used to survey the perception among the 11 academicians from four universities in Karachi and 60 practitioners working in the banking sector in Karachi. The results suggest that the conceptual understanding of the academicians and practitioners regarding the two concepts is on a lower level as both perceive the activities belonging to CRM and service marketing as mostly similar. This supports the notion given in the literature that CRM has evolved from Services Marketing paradigm. This has implications for firms in developing countries such as Pakistan that they should focus on developing and improving their capabilities in services marketing area first before venturing into an area (CRM) which is new and whose effectiveness in terms of firm performance is questionable even globally. This also creates a need to make the academic environment more competitive in terms of the knowledge base of the academicians which would in turn enhance the abilities of the practicing managers.
Keywords
Location
Seminar Room, S3 Ground Floor, CED Bldg
Session Theme
Session 4: Parallel Sessions
Session Type
Event
Session Chair
Dr. Huma Baqai
Start Date
4-5-2014 9:00 AM
End Date
4-5-2014 11:00 AM
Recommended Citation
Rahman, S., & Azhar, S. (2014). Parallel Sessions (Marketing Paradigm): Services Marketing and CRM – Perceptions of academicians and practitioners based on common activities. International Conference on Marketing. Retrieved from https://ir.iba.edu.pk/icm/2014/day2/4
Included in
Parallel Sessions (Marketing Paradigm): Services Marketing and CRM – Perceptions of academicians and practitioners based on common activities
Seminar Room, S3 Ground Floor, CED Bldg
Services marketing and CRM have generated a lot of interest within practicing managers as well as academicians. This paper aims to determine the commonalities in the two paradigms from the viewpoint of academicians as well as practitioners as previous studies indicated a gap regarding the importance being given to CRM as a new paradigm on one hand and its unsuccessful implementation status on the other hand. In order to achieve the above mentioned objectives, research was carried out in two phases. In phase one systematic review of eight Services Marketing and 9 CRM research papers was carried out in order to develop a framework of common activities of Services Marketing and CRM. In the Phase 2 of the research methodology, a questionnaire based survey was conducted to empirically test the logic that SM and CRM are the same and should not be treated as different. The framework developed from Phase 1 through pooling all the common activities from the two concepts of Services and CRM was utilized in developing the survey questionnaire to be used to survey the perception among the 11 academicians from four universities in Karachi and 60 practitioners working in the banking sector in Karachi. The results suggest that the conceptual understanding of the academicians and practitioners regarding the two concepts is on a lower level as both perceive the activities belonging to CRM and service marketing as mostly similar. This supports the notion given in the literature that CRM has evolved from Services Marketing paradigm. This has implications for firms in developing countries such as Pakistan that they should focus on developing and improving their capabilities in services marketing area first before venturing into an area (CRM) which is new and whose effectiveness in terms of firm performance is questionable even globally. This also creates a need to make the academic environment more competitive in terms of the knowledge base of the academicians which would in turn enhance the abilities of the practicing managers.
