Index of Paper Presentations for the Parallel Sessions - Academy of ...

and Reinartz, 2006) and sales (Ahearne et al, 2012). Similarly, Srivastava, Shervani and Fahey (1999) define CRMas a process whilst Greenberg (2009) and Hasan (2003) link CRM to company philosophy. For the purposes of thisstudy, we have embraced this definition of CRM as being:―A core business strategy that integrates internal process and functions, and external networks, to create anddeliver value to targeted customers at a profit. It is grounded on high quality data and enabled by IT‖ (Buttle,2009, p. 15).The in-depth literature review on CRM shows that although it has been widely implemented in industrializedmarkets (Hsin Hsin, 2007; Mendoza, Marius, Perez, and Griman, 2007; Chen and Popovich, 2003; Wilson, Daniel,and McDonald, 2002), the preponderance of customer centricity in organizations has only gained momentumrecently in emerging markets. The emerging markets that have spearheaded the adoption of CRM include Asia,Scandinavia and a select number of countries in South America. Within the broad African context, empiricalresearch has been conducted on CRM in North Africa, and Egypt in particular (Ali and Brooks, 2009). Sub-SaharanAfrica is still lagging behind regarding the number and the scale of CRM initiatives that are being implemented andpublished in the academic literature.Since our study focuses on an emerging market economy, South Africa, we found it necessary to define what anemerging market is.In a recent study on emerging markets, Sheth (2011) identifies four characteristics of emerging markets consistingof: (1) Market heterogeneity: Emerging markets are fragmented markets with a significant portion being at thebottom of the pyramid with no to limited water or electricity. (2) sociopolitical governance: The governance of themarket is done by business groups, religions rather than competition; (3) Unbranded competition: There is a wideproliferation of unbranded products the barter exchange offerings are widely adopted; (4) chronic shortage ofresources: this is evidenced with power outages and limited skills available in the market; (5) inadequate