Exploring Social Customer Relationship Management Adoption in Micro, Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

With the emergence of social media, customer relationship management has undergone noticeable changes and gained a great deal of attention from researchers and practitioners in recent years. In this paper, we provide additional insights into how intensively business-to-customer micro, small and medium-sized enterprises adopt social customer relationship management. Based on the literature review and insights from interviews with six micro, small and medium-sized enterprise owners/managers, we developed a conceptual research model that integrates the antecedents, intensity of social customer relationship management adoption, and performance outcomes. For the intensity of social customer relationship management adoption, we applied process-based conceptualization consisting of the customer engagement process and customer data management process. Then we empirically tested a conceptual research model by using data collected in a survey of 119 micro, small and medium-sized enterprises in Slovenia. We found that not all antecedents are equally relevant to both processes of the intensity of social customer relationship management adoption. Additionally, we found that the intensity of social customer relationship management adoption has a positive effect on customer relationship performance. Based on these findings, we provide recommendations for further research and offer practical implications for micro, small and medium-sized enterprises considering social customer relationship management adoption.