CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background of the Study
The banking sector is becoming increasingly competitive around the world. Today, many businesses such as banks, insurance companies, and other service providers realize the importance of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and its potential to help them acquire new customers, retain existing ones and maximize their lifetime value.
Customer Relationship Management is a sound business strategy to identify the bank’s most profitable customersand prospects, and devotes time and attention to expanding account relationships with those customers through individualized marketing, repricing, discretionary decisionmaking, and customized service-all delivered through the various sales channels thatthe bank uses.Further, the core and actual product being offered to business customers could be considered reasonably homogenous. Consequently, there is an increased need for banks to differentiate themselves from competitors at the augmented product level. One way that this might be achieved is to develop longer-term relationships with their key customers (Heffernan et al., 2008). The purpose of a business is to create customers. This statement is predicated on importance of keeping those same customers and growing the depth of their relationship with you. Initially, new customers cost you money-money spent on advertising and marketing and money spent learning what they want and teaching them how best to do business with you.
Customer relationship management (CRM) is currently under active consideration by organizations across the globe, parading itself in the open market in the disguise of new technology and software applications. Past market analyses concluded and predicted that the CRM software market was set to grow by 700% over the years 2001 to 2004 and generate total revenues of approximately $3 billion (Fox, 2001). This research works from the premise that the real purpose of business is to create and sustain mutually beneficial relationships, especially with selectedcustomers. With the main proposition which assume thatsuccessful relationships is the two-way flow of value(Christopher, M., et al., 2002). Trust key is a componentof organizational relationships, and managementapproach to the issue of trust is of academic and practicalsignificance. A rapidly growing body of literaturerecognizes that trust represents a significant variable thatinfluences organizational productivity (Kramer & Tyler,2006; Lewickiet al., 2008; Mayer et al., 2005; Mayer &Davis, 2009; Prusak& Cohen, 2010).
In competitive consumer markets, customer choice decisions are at the root of business survival, focusing attention on the attraction and retention of customers through personalized service. Rosenberg and Czepiel (2004) estimate that the cost of winning a new customer is five times higher than that of maintaining an existing
customer, while Reichheld and Sasser (2000) estimate that the retention of an additional 5% of customers, can increase profit by nearly 100%. Maintenance of the customer relationship is therefore cost-effective marketing, and has become a key aspect of most firm’s business strategy, prompting extensive deployment of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems (Morgan & Hunt, 1994; Kim et al., 2003). The nature of CRM aims to maximize customer value in the long term, by focusing business processes, marketing and customer service on client relationship maintenance, through the coordinating agency of an information technology (IT) system. Implementation of such a system is not a panacea, and is not, of itself, sufficient to transform a production oriented organization into a customer-oriented one (Kanji, 2002; Chang, 2005), which will require a wide-ranging overhaul of organizational structures, employee training and reward system, as well as appropriate IT support (Chen &Popovich, 2003). This study therefore examines the impact of customer relationship management and bank performance in Rivers State, Nigeria.
1.2 Statement of the Problem
This research work investigates the impact of customer relationship management on the perceived performance in the banking sector. Customers are the major products of every bank and the way these products are managed determine the effectiveness and efficiency of the banks and ultimately their performance. Nigeria Banks have fall short of the expectations of their customers in recent time. Customers have experienced challenges ranging from delayment, stock out, non-availability of staff at service points, unprofessional conduct or rudeness by the staff of the bank, poor standard of records or improper information, failed promises among others.
In the words of Ogunnaike and Ogbari (2008), customer service in our banking industry can be mistaken to mean customer delay and frustration. According to the authors almost every Nigeria bank encounters similar problem in meeting customers’ expectation of
services and customer satisfaction.
The issue of money transfer in banks is one major problem that customers of certain banks have been made to experience. In most cases, the customer hardly receives the payment of the money transferred in his account immediately. Also, the long queues and huge crowds in the banking halls can be highly devastating and discouraging most times, especially when the weekend is near. Most times, this long queues are as a result of the breakdown of the computers used by these cashiers, sometimes it occurs as a result of the cashier pushing duty to one another, as to who is to attend to the customer or not. Consequently, there is a problem of customer loyalty and profitability of the bank.
Customers have experienced challenges ranging from delayment, stock out, non-availability of staff at service points, unprofessional conduct or rudeness by the staff of the bank, poor standard of records or improper information, failed promises among others. Many academic works have been conducted to describe the corporate bankingrelationships and the rapidly changing environment in this sector throughout the globe.
1.3 Purpose of the Study
The main purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Performance in the Nigeria Banking Industry. The specific objectives are as the follows:
1. To examine the Customer Focusand Marketing Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry.
2. To examine the Customer Relationship Management Organization and Marketing Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry.
3. To examine the Knowledge Management and Marketing Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry
1.4 Research Questions
The following research questions have been formulated and will be answered at the completion of this work.
1. To what extent does Customer Focusenhance Marketing Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry?
2. To what extent does Customer Relationship Management Organization enhance Marketing Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry?
3. To what extent does Knowledge Management enhance Marketing Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry?
1.5 Research Hypotheses
An attempt to make our final answers not to look like mere assumption the hypotheses of this study will be stated as follows:
Ho1: There is no significant relationship between Customer focus and Market share in Nigerian Banking Industry.
Ho2: There is no significant relationship between Customer Relationship Management Organization and Market Share in Nigerian Banking Industry.
Ho3: There is no significant relationship between knowledge management and Sales Growth in the Nigerian Banking Industry.
Ho4: There is no significant relationship between Customer focus and Sales growth in Nigerian Banking Industry.
Ho5: There is no significant relationship between Customer Relationship Management Organization and Market Share in Nigerian Banking Industry.
Ho6: There is no significant relationship between knowledge management and Sales Growth in the Nigerian Banking Industry.
Conceptual frameworks of Customer Relationship Management and Marketing Performance in the Nigerian Banking Industry.
Source: Conceptualized from literature, 2015
1.6 Significance of the Study
The study on the relationship between CRM and bank performance is very important because CRM led to rapid growth of business through retention of the profitable customer segment, increase in profit of the bank due to low cost of managing customers(Sharma, 2011). Therefore this study will add new knowledge to bankers in Nigerian regarding the extra value banks can earn through implementation of CRM. Moreover the study will in light bankers on factors that are important to be considered when designing and implementing CRM in their organization so as to avoid excessive investment in CRM without getting significant reward in return.
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