Customer relationship management systems research: voids in the current literature

Abstract

The Status of the Customer Relaionship Management (CRM) literature is investigated for the period of 2000 to 2004 in order to provide an overview of academic writing on the subject and to identify blind spots in the present literature. The top ten MIS journals and proceedings of four international conferences were systematically screened. Selected publications were reviewed in a structured way and categorized according to the different phases in the CRM lifecycle: adoption, acquisition, implementation, use & maintenance, evolution and retirement. It appears that less attention has been paid to implementation issues and that the evolution and retirement phases have not sufficiently been explored yet. With this structured overview of the literature and the identification of the voids, this paper offers suggestions for further research in the area and hopes not only to contribute to the orientation of our own research, but also to inspire future CRM research of peer researchers in our field.