Impact of Social CRM Capabilities on Firm Performance: Examining the Mediating Role of Co-Created Customer Experience

Abstract

The emergence of social media technologies have drastically changed the face of customer relationship management (CRM), hence firms are incorporating social media technologies in their existing CRM systems which has led to the evolution of social CRM. This article extends capability-based perspective of traditional CRM by integrating it with social media technologies and to assess empirically their significant impact on firm performance. It also examines the mediating role of co-created customer experience. The developed hypothesis and proposed model were tested through structural equation modeling (SEM). The results show that co-created customer experiences play a role of mediator between social CRM capabilities and performance outcomes. Sales/marketing centric technology resources significantly influence four dimensions and customer centric technology resources influence two dimensions of relational information processing capability. The findings also depict that there is an influence of Sales/marketing and customer centric technology resources on customer linking, market sensing and social CRM capabilities.