The rise of social media is challenging the traditional notion of
customer relationship management (CRM). In a traditional CRM
framework, the organization possesses substantial information
about its customers, which it uses to manage its relationships with
them (Payne and Frow 2005; Verhoef, Venkatesan, et al. 2010).
Reinartz, Krafft, and Hoyer (2004, p 295) define CRM as a process
that “entails the systematic and proactive management of
relationships as they move from beginning (initiation) to end
(termination), with execution across the various customer-facing
contact channels.” Specifically, the company seeks to leverage
customer information in order to maximize customer lifetime value
(CLV) and the resulting customer equity (Berger and Nasr 1998;
Malthouse 2013; Schulze, Skiera, and Wiesel 2012).