Resumo

Literature recognizes CRM as a paramount construct in management studies, revealing a solid body of knowledge. However, as competition absorbs the impact of social networks on relationships dynamics and the evolution of concepts such as value co-creation and customer experience, companies need to rethink the way they manage customer relationships in this new, complex and unknown scenario. Based on this, we wonder: what is new on CRM studies? What does the state of the art in CRM tell us about this construct positioning in the latest marketing knowledge? These questions have guided our research

Scholars have studied the progress of CRM literature, connecting this construct to marketing strategies, technological application and competitive advantage creation. Nevertheless, the increase of customer demand level, their access to information, online competition and social media have changed the dynamics of customer and firms relationships, demanding scientific attention to the new routes for CRM future investigations. Hence, the main purpose of this article is to develop a systematic review on CRM, providing an overview of the state of the art and proposing a research agenda.

The theoretical framework of this paper indicates the bond of CRM with other marketing constructs such as organizational performance, financial outcomes, marketing strategy, customer engagement, customer experience, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, besides the generation of marketing intelligence and its power of enabling knowledge management. Hence, we foresee the connection between CRM and value creation, for companies and customers, which will create the relational benefits that is what keeps the relationship between customer and firm alive.

We have selected articles published between 2014 to 2018 in order to visit the most recent results about CRM. We decided to start our review in 2014 considering the fact that, up to this date, CRM literature has been systematically analyzed. Three databases were investigated: Web of Science, Scopus and Science Direct. Data from 566 selected articles were organized by author, year of publication, country of origin, source of publication, number of citation and keywords. We propose a bibliographic coupling, presented as a network diagram, revealing the connection between pairs of publications.

Our analysis revealed a growth perspective for CRM studies and five streams of investigation: CRM and performance; business-to-business CRM; social media and social CRM; loyalty; and customer-centric studies. Social CRM was identified as the major trend for future research, along with the implications of social media and online relationships to marketing practices, strategy formulation and consumer behavior. We suggest the development of theoretical essays focused on understanding the nature of this concept and its defining constructs so we can track the routes of its consequences.

CRM has reached a point of conceptual understanding: it is no longer seen as a set of technological tools, but as a combination of relationship marketing and technology information. Findings demonstrate the prevalence of strategic content in CRM, reinforcing its connection with firm performance. As the main trend for the near future, we indicate social CRM, regarding the impact of social media in the creation, adoption and implementation of CRM in this new and complex relational context caused by the advances of technology that has changes the way customers and organizations interact.

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