The influence of electronic customer relationship management (E-CRM) on customer satisfaction (CS) and customer loyalty (CL): A pilot study in Malaysian private institute of higher learning
List of Authors
  • Nur Kamariah Abdul Wahid , Siti Salmiah Abdullah

Keyword
  • Customer Relationship Management, Electronic Customer Relationship Management, Customer Satisfaction, Customer Loyalty, Institute of Higher Learning

Abstract
  • The Electronic Customer Relationship Management (E-CRM), as the primary e-commerce strategy, encompasses the integration of management, applications, and software with a key objective of enhancing customer service, fostering customer relationships, and retaining valuable clientele. In this pilot study, the researcher aims to explore the potential relationship between the E-CRM, Customer Satisfaction (CS) and Customer Loyalty (CL). To conduct the study, instruments adapted from previous research were used, avoiding the need for pre-testing. A total of 30 questionnaires were hand-delivered to respondents at two private higher education institutions, allowing two weeks for completion with 100% of response rate. Data from the questionnaire was entered and analysed using IBM SPSS Statistics 23 software. The reliability of the instrument was assessed using the composite mean, resulting in a reliability coefficient of 0.955 for E-CRM, 0.904 for CS, and 0.885 for CL. This reliability coefficient provides an overview of the consistency and reliability of the measurement instrument used in the study. This study provides valuable insights into optimizing E-CRM specifically tailored for Private Institutes of Higher Learning, aligning it with their unique organizational cultures, and ultimately elevating customer satisfaction and loyalty levels, which, in turn, can have a positive impact on organizational profitability and revenue.

Reference
  • 1. Al-Dmour, H. H., Algharabat, R. S., Khawaja, R., & Al-Dmour, R. H. (2019). Investigating the impact of ECRM success factors on business performance: Jordanian commercial banks. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics, 31(1), 105–127. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1108/APJML-10-2017-0270.

    2. Al-Suraihi, W. A., Al-Suraihi, A.-H. A., Ibrahim, I., Al-Tahitah, A., & Abdulrab, M. (2020). The Effect of Customer Relationship Management on Consumer Behavior: A Case of Retail Industry in Malaysia. International Journal of Management and Human Science (IJMHS), 4(3), 32–40.

    3. Alhaiou, T., Irani, Z., & Ali, M. (2009). The relationship between eCRM implementation and eloyalty at different adoption stages of transaction cycle: A conceptual framework and hypothesis. Proceedings of the European and Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems, EMCIS 2009, (January).

    4. Alim, S., & Ozuem, W. (2014). The Influences of e-CRM on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty in the UK Mobile Industry. Copyright©2014 Scienceline Publication Journal of Applied Business and Finance Researches, 3(2), 47–54.

    5. Azman, N., & Abdullah, D. (2020). A Critical Analysis of Malaysian Higher Education Institutions’ Response Towards Covid-19: Sustaining Academic Program Delivery. Journal of Sustainability Science and Management, 16(1), 70–96. https://doi.org/10.46754/jssm.2021.01.008.

    6. Burra, V. K., Ramakrishna, G., Murthy, B. G. K., Shareef, J. S., Padmalatha, P. S. V, & Subbarao, M. V. (2022). E-CRM influence towards customer satisfaction and loyalty: An empirical survey on mobile phone consumers. Academy of Marketing Studies Journal, 26(4), 1–7.

    7. Cherapanukorn, V. (2017). Development of eCRM Success: A Case Study of Hotel Industry. International Journal of Trade, Economics and Finance, 8(2), 90–95. https://doi.org/10.18178/ijtef.2017.8.2.545.

    8. Chun, S. Y., Iancu, D. A., & Trichakis, N. (2020). Loyalty Program Liabilities and Point Values. Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, 22(2), 257–272. https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2018.0748.

    9. El-Manstrly, D. (2016). Enhancing customer loyalty: critical switching cost factors. Journal of Service Management, 27(2), 144–169. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOSM-09-2015-0291.

    10. Gamage, K. A. A., Wijesuriya, D. I., Ekanayake, S. Y., Rennie, A. E. W., Lambert, C. G., & Gunawardhana, N. (2020). Online delivery of teaching and laboratory practices: Continuity of university programmes during COVID-19 pandemic. Education Sciences, 10(10), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.3390/educsci10100291.

    11. Gilboa, S., Seger-Guttmann, T., & Mimran, O. (2019). The unique role of relationship marketing in small businesses’ customer experience. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 51, 152–164. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.06.004.

    12. Giovanis, A. N., & Athanasopoulou, P. (2018). Consumer-brand relationships and brand loyalty in technology-mediated services. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 40, 287–294. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2017.03.003.

    13. Gonzalez, M. E., Quesada, G., Martinez, J. L., & Gonzalez-Cordoba, S. (2021). Global education: using lean tools to explore new opportunities. Journal of International Education in Business, 14(1), 37–58. https://doi.org/10.1108/JIEB-11-2018-0052.

    14. Harris, L. C., & Goode, M. M. . (2004). The four levels of loyalty and the pivotal role of trust: a study of online service dynamics. Journal of Retailing, 80(2), 139–158. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretai.2004.04.002.

    15. Herman, L. E., Sulhaini, S., & Farida, N. (2021). Electronic Customer Relationship Management and Company Performance: Exploring the Product Innovativeness Development. Journal of Relationship Marketing, 20(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1080/15332667.2019.1688600.

    16. Hsiu, C. H. (2007). The Effects of Introducing Customer Relationship management to Department Store on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty. A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Management of Tatung University, 1- 93.

    17. Kampani, N. and Jhamb, D. (2020), “Analyzing the role of e-crm in managing customer relations: acritical review of the literature”, Journal of Critical Review, Vol. 7 No. 4, pp. 221-226.

    18. Kim, J. (2021). Platform quality factors influencing content providers’ loyalty. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 60, 102510. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102510.

    19. Kumar, P., Mokha, A. K., & Pattnaik, S. C. (2022). Electronic customer relationship management (E-CRM), customer experience and customer satisfaction: evidence from the banking industry. Benchmarking, 29(2), 551–572. https://doi.org/10.1108/BIJ-10-2020-0528.

    20. Liu, X., Shin, H., & Burns, A. C. (2021). Examining the impact of luxury brand’s social media marketing on customer engagement: Using big data analytics and natural language processing. Journal of Business Research, 125, 815–826. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2019.04.042.

    21. Mang’unyi, E. E., Khabala, O. T., & Govender, K. K. (2017). The relationship between e-CRM and customer loyalty: A Kenyan commercial bank case study. Banks and Bank Systems, 12(2), 106–115. https://doi.org/10.21511/bbs.12(2).2017.11.

    22. Mang’unyi, E. E., Khabala, O. T., & Govender, K. K. (2018). Bank customer loyalty and satisfaction: the influence of virtual e-CRM. African Journal of Economic and Management Studies, 9(2), 250–265. https://doi.org/10.1108/AJEMS-08-2017-0183.

    23. Manogharan, M. W., & Varadarajan, S. (2018). The Effect of Customer Relationship Management on Customer retention in Private Higher Education Institute in Malaysia. International Journal of Research In Education Methodology, 9(1), 1441–1453. https://doi.org/10.24297/ijrem.v9i1.7356.

    24. Mohamed Abdeldayem, S. M., Yehia, E., & Marie, M. (2022). Relationship between E-CRM, Service Quality, Customer Satisfaction, Trust, and Loyalty in banking Industry. Future Computing and Informatics Journal, 7(2), 51–74. https://doi.org/10.54623/fue.fcij.7.2.5.

    25. Mulyana, A. (2020). The effect of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) on customer loyalty. Advances in Business, Management and Entrepreneurship, 164–167. https://doi.org/10.1201/9780429295348-38.

    26. Oppong, G. Y. S., Singh, S., & Kujur, F. (2020). Potential of digital technologies in academic entrepreneurship – a study. International Journal of Entrepreneurial Behavior & Research, 26(7), 1449–1476. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJEBR-06-2019-0401.

    27. Otto, A. S., Szymanski, D. M., & Varadarajan, R. (2020). Customer satisfaction and firm performance: insights from over a quarter century of empirical research. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 48(3), 543–564. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-019-00657-7.

    28. Rashwan, H. H. M., M. Mansi, A. L., & Hassan, H. E. (2019). The impact of the E- CRM (expected security and convenience of website design) on E- loyalty field study on commercial banks. Journal of Business & Retail Management Research, 14(01), 106–122. https://doi.org/10.24052/jbrmr/v14is01/art-10.

    29. Reichheld, F. F., & Sasser, W. E. (1990). Zero defections: quality comes to services. 1990, 68(5), 105-111.

    30. Rita, P., Oliveira, T., & Farisa, A. (2019). The impact of e-service quality and customer satisfaction on customer behavior in online shopping. Heliyon, 5(10), e02690. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.heliyon.2019.e02690.

    31. Setiawan, A., & Widaryanto, R. (2018). Mobile CRM student-parent information system. IOP Conference Series: Materials Science and Engineering, 403(1). https://doi.org/10.1088/1757-899X/403/1/012076.

    32. Shanab, E. A., & Anagreh, L. (2015). Impact of electronic customer relationship management in banking sector. International Journal of Electronic Customer Relationship Management, 9(4), 254. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJECRM.2015.074196.

    33. Shastri, S., Sharma, R., & Sethi, V. (2020). An empirical study on influence of e-CRM towardscustomer loyalty in banking sector. International Journal of Public Sector PerformanceManagement, 6(5), 642–652.

    34. Singh, N. S., Abrahim, O., Altare, C., Blanchet, K., Favas, C., Odlum, A., & Spiegel, P. B. (2020). COVID-19 in humanitarian settings: documenting and sharing context-specific programmatic experiences. Conflict and Health, 14(1), 79. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-020-00321-w.

    35. Snijders, I., Wijnia, L., Rikers, R. M. J. P., & Loyens, S. M. M. (2019). Alumni loyalty drivers in higher education. Social Psychology of Education, 22(3), 607–627. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11218-019-09488-4.

    36. Srinivasan, S. S., Anderson, R., & Ponnavolu, K. (2002). Customer loyalty in e-commerce: an exploration of its antecedents and consequences. Journal of Retailing, 78(1), 41–50. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-4359(01)00065-3.

    37. Sujarwanto, Rofiah, K., & Iriani, S. S. (2019). E-CRM for Cooperation Service System in Higher Education Setting. 387(Icei), 398–401.

    38. Sundström, M., & Hjelm-Lidholm, S. (2020). Re-positioning customer loyalty in a fast-moving consumer goods market. Australasian Marketing Journal, 28(1), 30–34.

    39. Swathi, T. V. S. . (2020). A Systematic Review and Emerging Performance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) on Customer Satisfaction and Loyalty. Journal of Advanced Research in …, (September), 1075–1085. Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344896189.

    40. Szymanski, D. M., & Henard, D. H. (2001). Customer Satisfaction: A Meta-Analysis of the Empirical Evidence. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 29(1), 16–35. https://doi.org/10.1177/0092070301291002.

    41. Upadhyaya, M. (2020). Analysis of E-Crm, Service Quality and Brand Trust Relationship With Student Satisfaction. Humanities & Social Sciences Reviews, 8(1), 227–232. https://doi.org/10.18510/hssr.2020.8132.

    42. Uzir, M. U. H., Al Halbusi, H., Thurasamy, R., Thiam Hock, R. L., Aljaberi, M. A., Hasan, N., & Hamid, M. (2021). The effects of service quality, perceived value and trust in home delivery service personnel on customer satisfaction: Evidence from a developing country. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 63, 102721. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102721.