Customer Relationship Marketing (CRM) Practices in Danish Small Businesses

[Abstract] This paper examines the extent to which the adoption of CRM software packages is a pre-requisite of customer orientation strategies of small firms. This is done by conducting an empirical investigation into the internal determinants of CRM adoption behavior of 179 randomly selected small firms in the Northern Jutland region of Denmark. The results suggest that top managers in these firms endorse the strategic value of customer orientation to their businesses but do not consider CRM software packages as necessary for building strong relationships with their customers. This suggests that small firms may make their CRM adoption/rejection decisions on the basis of a trade-off between expected benefits from using the available CRM packages compared with alternative modes of achieving customer loyalty.

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