The Relation between the Use of E-Customer Relation Management (E-CRM) and Customer Satisfaction of the Branches of Saderat Bank of Golestan Province

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1 International Research Journal of Management Sciences. Vol., 2 (11), , 2014 Available online at ISSN x 2014 The Relation between the Use of E-Customer Relation Management (E-CRM) and Customer Satisfaction of the Branches of Saderat Bank of Golestan Province Malihe Amery, Ehsan Sadeh, Hossein Didehkhani Department of Management, Aliabad Katoul Branch, Islamic Azad University, Aliabad Katoul, Iran Corresponding Author: Ehsan Sadeh ABSTRACT: The aim of the present study is to investigate the relation between the use of e-crm and the customer satisfaction and loyalty of branches of Saderat Bank of Golestan. The participants of this study include 384 individuals who were randomly selected. The participants completed the self-constructed questionnaire and it was analyzed through structural equation method. The findings showed meaningful positive relation between e-crm and customer satisfaction and loyalty of the branches of Saderat bank of Golestan. Furthermore, there was meaningful positive relation between customer satisfaction and loyalty of the branches of Saderat bank of Golestan province. The results recommend that banks should consider some facilities to attract customer satisfaction and they can use e-crm in this regard. Keywords: Customer loyalty, Customer satisfaction, E-CRM. INTRODUCTION Making and keeping the customer loyalty is the key element in obtaining sustainable competitive advantage for organizations. In traditional markets, that company could be successful and leading that creates high loyalty in its customer through keeping the price of products in low level, high bargaining power in interaction with suppliers, reducing sale costs, making strong barriers against the entrance of new competitors and expanding the activity of the company to enter to the goods and services market similar to current goods and services. The emergence and expansion of e-trade have increased the significance of getting faithful visitors for the company s website (Haqiqi et al., 2007). Nowadays, aggregation of the competition in services sectors made the role of customer loyalty more outstanding than past times. In modern approaches, marketing includes development and consideration of satisfaction, quality from the customer s point of view and effective communication with customer. Thus, the new organizations try to have faithful customers (Arasli, 2002). Faithful customers do more purchase, show more incline toward expending more money, are easily available and act as attorney of the company (Harris & Goode, 2004). Bowen and Chen (2007) believes that there are three distinct approaches for measuring brand loyalty: behavioral approach including purchase repetition and brand recommendation to others, attitude approach including the decision to purchase the intended brand and commitment to it despite provision of similar services and the marketing attempt by the competitors and the third approach, the combination of attitude and behavioral approaches. The researchers believe that customer satisfaction is the most determining factor of customer loyalty such that Bowen and Chen (2007) in investigation of the relation between customer satisfaction and loyalty concluded that a bit change in customer satisfaction leads to considerable changes in loyalty. On the other hand, Dimitriades (2006) confirmed this relation and claimed that customer satisfaction is not a separate concept from loyalty rather customer satisfaction has positive relation with customer loyalty (Ranjbarian et al., 2008). Customer satisfaction increasingly is the basis of standard performance and excellent standardization for each trade organization and the more satisfied customers the organization have, the purchase rate increases, the positive points of the company are proposed and the incline toward change decreases (Jamali, 2007). Satisfied customers show more incline toward loyalty to organization and bring many benefits to organization. In addition, the satisfied customers usually dissipate good news about the product or the services and propose the product or the service to the others. Thus, customer satisfaction is a key factor for survival of the organization (Bellou, 2007). Catler defines customer satisfaction as a degree at which the real performance of a company satisfies the expectations of customer. According to Catller, if 355

2 the performance of the company satisfies the customer expectations, the customer feels satisfaction and otherwise, he feels dissatisfaction (Hosseini &Rezaei, 2011). The literature review shows that satisfaction is obtained due to two parallel processes that include the emotional process and normal process. In fact, satisfaction is obtained due to the comparison of the customer s expectation of the good or service and the real performance of that product or service (Robinot & Giannelloni, 2010). Nowadays, getting customer satisfaction has allocated critical and main place in the objectives of organizations and the managers know that their success in achievement of major goals of organization depends on customer satisfaction. During recent decades, the significance of customer in organizations has increased such that the incline of organizations has changed from product-oriented to customer- oriented. Despite the past, the customers have this possibility to compare various products in high number and diversity all over the world and select the most desired (Taleqani & Rastgar, 2012). On the other hand, the emergence of e-trade leads to significant changes in most aspects of trade including establishment of new companies with new trade models, trade occupational opportunities and new methods for business processing such that e-trade method becomes an alternative and replacement for communication in sale, marketing and customer support. These variations could provide a new kind of competitive advantage for customer relation management (especially using network systems such as internet, intranet and extranet) (Mir Fakhredini et al., 2009). CRM creates many opportunities for data application for realization of customers and create common value. This requires multifunctional merging of processes, individuals, operations and marketing capabilities that are possible through data, technology and programs (Adrian & Pennie, 2005). The main aim of e-crm is perception of values and better behavior with costumers to increase their loyalty and profiting of the company. In other words, the companies should rely on reconstruction of the relation between company and customer rather than attempt for more sale (Mir Fakhredini et al., 2009). CRM can be considered as a process that helps us collect different information about customers, sale, efficacy of marketing activities, speed in responding to customers and market s inclines (ThuyUyen, 2007). According to Hoffman and Kashmeri (2000), the difference between e-crm and CRM is in this way that e-crm combines marketing, market and customer services activities and achieve continuous operational process. In this approach, the media used by the institution including catalogues, phone centers, and websites are more advanced than CRM. In traditional approach, the local and external canals of the organization are combined and a space was created for registration of data related to each customer and the data related to each customer was recorded and kept in it. In fact, a window was allocated to each customer. Traditional CRM technology has now promoted by electronic techniques such as web, wireless and audio technologies and combined with e-trade that makes the learning of e-crm technology significant. Since, nowadays the companies should make customer-oriented knowledge and dissipate it and promote the prediction ability of customer needs (Liu et al., 2012). While the wider use and dependency on e-crm is increasing, the need to development of better perception of e-crm success also increases. Customer satisfaction is one of the most significant objectives of e-crm and usually satisfaction is used as representative of success. Due to this, for the companies that use e-crm or think of using it, it is very significant to get data about this fact that how e-crm can lead to customer satisfaction and loyalty (Kamalian et al., 2010). Privatization and increased number of banks and financial institutions in one hand, and provision of various plans and methods to increase customer attraction, their increases satisfaction and at the end making them faithful in long term, on the other hand, made the researcher to investigate the variables of customer satisfaction and loyalty and effective factors on keeping them faithful in the branches of Saderat Bank of Golestan province. One of the main factors in this area is the use of e-crm since this bank should seek to use the modern and electronic techniques and systems to maintain its place and obtain competitive advantage. METHODOLOGY The research methodology was correlational. The statistical sample includes the customers of branches of Saderat bank of Golestan province that according to Morgan table, 384 subjects were selected as sample. In the implementation process of the study, after providing primary information about the evaluation instrument and the aim of the test, the responding method was completely explained to the participants. Concerning the moral consideration, after getting the subjects content and providing required awareness, they were insured that the data will be just used in this study and will remain confidential. To measure research variables, researcher-constructed questionnaire was used. This scale includes 13 questions to measure e-crm, 12 questions to measure customer satisfaction and 11 questions for evaluation of customer loyalty. The validity of questionnaire was reconsidered and confirmed based on the opinions of some experts in this area including professor and the experts of bank. Furthermore, to measure the validity of this scale, factor analysis was used. To determine its reliability, Cronbach Alpha was used. Concerning the results of the study, it can be concluded that the questionnaire and its subscales have high and acceptable reliability. 356

3 Table 1. Cronbach Alpha coefficient of research variables. Variable Number of questions Alpha Cronbach percentage e-crm Customer satisfaction Customer loyalty Table 2. Cronbach Alpha coefficient of all questions. Number of questions Alpha Cronbach percentage For data analysis, structural equation method was used. all calculations have been done in 0.05 and using SPSS18. RESULTS Table 3 shows the mean and standard deviation of the scores of participants in each of research variables. Table 3. descriptive statistic of research variables. Variable Abb. N Minimum Maximum Mean Std. Variance Deviation Statistic Statistic Statistic Statistic Std. Statistic Statistic Error Electronic customer ECRM relationship management customer satisfaction CS Customer loyalty CL The correlation between research variables has been presented in table4. As seen in table, the correlation between all variables is meaningful. Table 4. The correlation between research variables. ECRM CS CL ECRM Pearson Correlation 1 Sig. (2-tailed) N 384 CS Pearson Correlation ** 1 Sig. (2-tailed).000 N CL Pearson Correlation.680 **.595 ** 1 Sig. (2-tailed) N **Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). To estimate the model, maximum likelihood and to study the model goodness, Chi2/df, CFI, GFI, AGFI, AFI, NNFI, RMSEA were used (table 5). Table 5. The results obtained from goodness of fit of research structural model. Goodness index Acceptable range Value Result X 2 /df < Desired CFI > Desired GFI > Desired AFI > Desired NFI > Desired NNFI > Desired RMSEA < Desired 357

4 The results of the study of goodness of fit of structural model of the study that is presented in table5 indicates the goodness of fit of the model since the value less than RMSEA 0.08 indicates the acceptable goodness of structural model, furthermore, CFI, GFI, AGFI, NFI, NNFI values are all above 0.9. The results of data analysis have been presented in table6. The path coefficient of the relation between e-crm and CS is T-statistic for this coefficient is and its value is higher than significance threshold, i.e It can be concluded that there is positive meaningful relation between e-crm and CS. Furthermore, path coefficient between e- CRM and CL was obtained as T-statistics for this equation was 8.57 and its value was higher than significance threshold, i.e Thus, it can be concluded that there is meaningful relation between e-crm and CL. The other analyses showed the path coefficient between CS and CL as Since t value for this coefficient is 4.87, it can be concluded that the obtained coefficient is meaningful. Thus, there is positive meaningful relation between CS and CL. Table 6. The summary of statistical results. Path Abb. Path coefficient Significance Test result Electronic customer relationship CS ECRM Accepted management- customer satisfaction Electronic customer relationship CL ECRM Accepted management- customer loyalty Customer satisfaction- customer loyalty CL---CS Accepted DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION The aim of the present study is to investigate the relation between the use of e-crm and customer satisfaction and loyalty of the branches of Saderat bank of Golestan province. The results showed meaningful positive relation between e-crm and CS and between e-crm and CL and between CS and CL. These results are consistent with the results of Liu et al (2012), Becker et al (2009), Kamalian et al (2010), Taleqani and Rastgar (2012) and Mir Fakhredini et al (2009) studies. Leo et al (2012) confirmed the effect of e-crm on customer satisfaction and loyalty, on the other hand, they showed that customer satisfaction leads to his loyalty. Becker et al (2009) showed that CRM has positive effect on keeping of customer. Furthermore, Kamalian et al (2010) reported meaningful relation between ECRM and CS. The results recommend that banks should consider some facilities to attract customer satisfaction and they can use e-crm. REFERENCES Adrian P, Pennie F, A strategic framework for customer relationship management. Journal of Marketing. 69: Arasli H, Diagnosing whether northern Cyprus hotels are ready for TQM: An empirical analysis. Total Quality Management. 13(3): Becker JU, Greve G, Albers S, The impact of technological and organizational implementation of CRM on customer acquisition. Maintenance and Retention. 10(5): Bellou V, Achieving long-term customer satisfaction through organizational culture: Evidence from the health care sector. Managing Service Quality. (17)5: Bowen HT, Chen SL, The relationship between customer loyalty and customer satisfaction. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 13(5): Haqiqi M, Alavi MR, Sarrafi A, Presenting a model for customer loyalty in e-marketplaces. Knowledge Management.20 (79): Harris LC, Goode MMH, The four levels of loyalty and the pivotal role of trust: A study of online service dynamics. Journal of Retailing. 80: Hosseini MH, Rezaei M, Factors affecting brand loyalty of the dairy products market. Perspective of Business Management. (5): Jamali D, A study of customer satisfaction in the context of a public private partnerships. International Journal of Qualiy & Reliability Management. (21)4: Liu CH, Tseng HCH, Chuang LM, Huang, CHM, A study of the impact of the e-crm perspective on customer satisfaction and customer loyalty-exemplified by bank Sinopec. Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies. (4)8: Kamalian AR, Amini Lari M, Moezi H, The study of the effect of electronic customer relationship management systems to customer satisfaction, "the case study of Golsar Chinese of Fars". Landscape Management Journal. 33: Mir Fakhredini SH, Hatami Nasab SH, Talei Far R, Explaining the electronic customer relationship management (e-crm). Business Management Journal. 1 (2):

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