Effect of customer perceived value on customer relationship management performance in automobile industry in Iran

Abstract

Based on relationship marketing theory and consumption experience theory, this research examines the relationship between customers perceived value with customer relationship management (CRM) performance. Despite myriad studies on customer values on CRM performance, studies tend to focus only on the utilitarian rather than hedonistic measurement of value. This study addressed this limitation by considering both, utilitarian and hedonistic aspect, in defining customer values. In this study, the measurement of customer perceived value includes functional value, social value, emotional value and epistemic value while CRM performance is measured through the intangible and tangible aspect. Gender, age, education level, monthly salary and number of car owned were identified as the control variables. Based on the setting in Iran automotive industry, the respondents of this study consist of the customers of Iran Khodro service center in Tehran. This study adopted quantitative approach and used questionnaire survey for its data collection using the multi-stage sampling technique. Four hundred respondents participated in the study. The Partial Least Square technique was used to analyse the relationship between variables. The results of this study supported the relationship between customer perceived value and CRM performance. The results showed that there are significant relationships between functional value, emotional value, social value, epistemic value with CRM tangible and intangible performance. Based on the results of this study, customer perceived value could be used to explain more than 85% of the variance of the CRM performance. Finally, this study contributes to the existing literature by determining the relationship between customer perceived values and CRM performance aspect.