The effect of customer relationship management adoption in business‐to‐business markets

Abstract

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effects of customer relationship management (CRM) practices on customer satisfaction and firm performance in business‐to‐business (B2B) markets.Design/methodology/approachA model is developed and empirically tested through survey data obtained from 113 Turkish B2B companies.FindingsThe results indicate that CRM adoption has a significant positive effect on both customer satisfaction and organizational performance in B2B settings. CRM adoption is also found to affect organizational marketing performance significantly, but not financial performance. Additionally, the results reveal that enhanced customer satisfaction leads to better organizational performance in the B2B organization. Environmental dynamism and competition was found to have a negative moderating effect on the relationship between customer satisfaction and organizational performance.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to existing literature by incorporating customer‐facing CRM processes as a construct in the proposed model. The conclusions drawn have implications for both CRM and B2B research literature.