Impact of CRM strategy on relationship commitment and new product development: mediating effects of learning from failure

Abstract

Despite all the benefits that customer relationship management (CRM) offers to companies, various studies show high rates of failure when implementing CRM schemes. This study aims to explain how CRM can capitalize on the notion of learning behavior from failures in order to improve the relationship building and innovation performance in high technology ventures.Questionnaire survey data were collected from 234 CEOs and General Managers from ICT firms based in Beijing, Shanghai and Hangzhou, China. Subsequently, both hierarchical linear regression and SEM was conducted to test the hypothesized relationships.Findings show that CRM positively affects both NPD and commitment to long-term relationships and confirm that learning behaviour from failure mediates the main effects of CRM, which consists of strategic and market orientation foci, in combination with internal marketing and knowledge management. Specifically, although all four aspects of CRM are important to NPD, knowledge management is of particular importance.