The factors affecting adoption of CRM at organisational level in Iran's shipping industry

Shipping, the World's largest industry, consists of sectors and each sector is approaching the IT revolution in different ways for the achievement of competitive advantages. Today the shipping industry has expanded dramatically and it is in the process of harnessing the advancements of Information Technology in providing added value for the business. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a fast-growing segment of business software that has been embraced by manufacturers and service providers in many industries. CRM is about understanding the buying habits and preferences of the customers and prospects.For a global competitive market such as shipping, CRM can bring a lot of advantages. But contrary to what is expected most carriers and logistic providers have yet to launch a formal CRM program. And few CRM vendors have crafted transportation industry specific applications. Considering the good potential of this industry for adopting CRM, the main contribution of this research would be to the CRM vendors and marketers who are seeking for a good market in order to launch their product. This research can help them to influence the adoption process of CRM at organizational level and also find out what motivates the adoption of CRM and related technologies in this industry. With this in mind this research is trying to find out the factors effecting the adoption of CRM at organizational level in Iran's shipping industry. The data has been collected from 50 companies which have been selected randomly. This research is mainly exploratory. Quantitative approach was used during the whole study. At the end of this research it was found out that adopter characteristics (attitude toward change and perceived CRM knowledge) , environmental hostility (market uncertainty , environmental hostility) and perceived CRM characteristics (CRM relative advantage, CRM complexity ,CRM trialability , CRM switching cost and CRM compatibility) all have positive effect on intention to adopt CRM. Among these three sets of factors adopter characteristics have more effect on intention to adopt CRM.