The domain of customer relationship management extends into many areas
of marketing and strategic decisions. Its recent prominence is facilitated by
the convergence of several other paradigms of marketing and by corporate
initiatives that have developed around the theme of cooperation and the
collaboration of organizational units and their stakeholders, including
customers. CRM refers to a conceptually broad phenomenon of business
activity, and if the phenomenon of cooperation and collaboration with
customers becomes the dominant paradigm of marketing practice and
research, CRM has the potential to emerge as the predominant perspective of
marketing. From the corporate implementation point of view, CRM should
not be misunderstood to simply mean a software solution implementation
project. Building relationships with customers is a fundamental business of
every enterprise, and it requires a holistic strategy and process to make it
successful.
From an academic standpoint an important question is whether CRM
or relationship marketing will become a well-respected, freestanding, and
distinct discipline in marketing. Our belief is that it certainly has the
potential, and we wish that it would happen because marketing will benefit
enormously from it. The lessons learned from previous efforts, both
successful and unsuccessful, of various marketing domains that have tried to
become disciplines provide a good road map of how to develop CRM and
relationship marketing into a distinct discipline. As an intervention strategy,
it would be highly desirable for relationship marketing and CRM scholars to
organize their own association and their own scholarly journal.