Sustainable Marketing Performance of Banks in the Digital Economy: The Role of Customer Relationship Management

Abstract

Customer relationship management (CRM) has become the lifeblood of banking and the principal driver of sustainable marketing performance in the digital economy. The discovery of computers and the Internet has transformed the industrial economy into digital through the integration of CRM and related elements, resulting in several benefits, including growth in research documents and increased collaborations. Marketers have developed a CRM system that integrates the digital infrastructure and digital capabilities of people to promote the sustainable marketing performance of banks through innovations such as customer acquisition, segmentation, customization, loyalty, and profitability. The paper aims to analyse the scientific landscape of CRM and sustainable marketing performance in the digital economy. The authors resorted to the Scopus database to extract 1485 documents and filtered 248 for Scopus analysis and to determine the roles of CRM. The filtered documents were then exported to VOSviewer for visualization mapping, including co-authorship and co-occurrence analysis. The visualization mapping depicts relationships among the keywords. The results of the research indicate an upwards growth in research publications since 2003, growing interest in funding and collaborations by countries and institutions, and the relationship among the keywords. The emerging financial crisis is a motivation for research in the area of study. The results also indicate that the integration of CRM into digital technology promotes collaborations and innovations resulting in the development of banking software applications to promote customer acquisition, retention, loyalty, profitability and sustainability. The study developed an integrated framework for sustainable banking performance. Global crises, including financial crises and COVID-19, have increased research output and become an integral part of CRM. Green banking is to be researched and integrated. The study will be used as a basis for further studies and for bankers for policy formulation.