The impact of customer relationship management capability dimension on organizational performance in the micro, small and medium scale enterprises; the moderating effect of competitive intensity
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Date
November, 2016.
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Abstract
The study observes the role of competitive intensity in moderating the relationship between Customer Relationship Management (CRM) capability and firm performance. The research was necessitated because of the problem of several firms not being able to harness the full benefit of the CRM concept mainly because there is no backing capability to ensure competitive advantage. In order to achieve this, some specific objectives were set including to determine the CRM capability practices among Micro, Small and Medium scale Enterprises (MSME’s), to measure the effect of CRM capability on organizational performance, to investigate competitive intensity and its effect on organizational performance in the MSME sector and to ascertain extent to which competitive intensity affects the role played by CRM capabilities in determining organizational performance. In order to achieve this, 400 structured questionnaires were conveniently distributed to owners, managers and executives of MSMEs in Ashanti region. 400 responses were retrieved and analyzed quantitatively using Stata and SPSS. Mean analysis, correlation analysis and Hierarchical Linear Modeling (HLM) regression were the main analysis used in deriving the findings from the research. Findings from the research indicate that firms in the sector have the capabilities of managing customer information knowledge and winning them back. However, upgrading customer relationship is on the average in the sector. It was also found from the correlation and HLM regression that CRM capabilities do have a positive impact on firm performance whiles controlling for period of working in the business and the type of business. The work also indicated that the introduction of competitive intensity as a moderating variable saw a change in performance in the effect of CRM capabilities and performance. It was recommended that owners, managers and executives should build a stronger CRM capabilities whiles working hard to stay above the competition in the sector.
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A thesis Submitted to the Department of Marketing and Corporate Strategy, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), in partial fulfillment of the requirement for the degree of Master of Philosophy.