Potential Impact of Cultural Differences On Electronic Customer Relationship Management (eCRM) Systems

Over the last decade there has been a dramatic growth in the acquisition of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Systems. However, more recently there has been an increase in reported eCRM failures, suggesting that the implementation issues are not just technical, but encompass wider behavior factors. In this paper the authors highlight the cultural issues as a new trend in studying CRM. The authors differentiate between three different levels of culture: individual, organizational, and national cultures. Also, the authors highlight the interaction between these different levels of culture in the context of eCRM systems and highlight universality versus particularity of culture and the effect of that on the eCRM implementation process. The paper also presents a framework, which proposes a set of best practices and guidelines for management of eCRM systems within a multinational environment. This framework will be tested in future research stages and will be modified according to the results.