Finally, functioning as a major ele

Finally, functioning as a major element of key account management (KAM), trade shows have a pivotal role to play in solving specific problems that arise at different stages of relationship development
between firms in a dyadic KAM scenario (Blythe, 2002). In view of the nature and various functions of trade shows over development of customer relationships, the current study takes advantage of theresearch opportunities offered by trade shows to examine the practice of marketing metrics and its impact on CRM. Two themes in the literature of CRM are of particular relevance to
this research: knowledge of the antecedents of CRM effort and the conclusions that have so far been drawn about the impact of CRM effort on performance of CRM programs. With regard to antecedents
that may influence level of CRM effort, organizational characteristics consisting of culture, configuration, and strategy have been reported. Taking the organizational culture perspective, previous researchers have identified market orientation as a critical predictor of marketing
metrics (Ambler & Wang, 2003; Kokkinaki & Ambler, 1999). Adopting the organizationally embedded view of marketing, some scholars (Jarachandran, Sharma, Kaufman, & Raman, 2005) reported customer-
centric management system as a very significant factor affecting use of (relational) information in managing CRM programs. Using an innovation adoption perspective, other investigators (Ko, Kim, Kim, &
Woo, 2008) revealed very powerful impact of such organizational characteristics as prospective strategy and information system maturity on the CRM adoption process. However, a key problem
with the existent approach is that firms fail to recognize individual key customers in their own context. Despite the promise and potential benefit of customizing offerings based on knowledge of individual customers, much CRM remains focused on market segmentation (Mitussis, O'Malley, & Patterson, 2006) and much of the practices of CRM remains rooted in the mix management paradigm (Gordon,2000). Given the growing importance of the customer value perspective which argues that customers choose continuing relationships with those suppliers that consistently offer higher value
(Wang, Lo, Chi, & Yang, 2004), this study argued for a customerfocused approach to engage strategically important key accounts in value-creating CRM activities. In keeping with a customer value-based theory of the firm (Slater, 1997), this study aims to extend the existent
literature by examining the relationship between marketing metrics and two key factors namely: customer value-based organizational culture and processes.