Sustainable customer relationship management

Abstract

Purpose – Sustainable customer relationship management (SCRM) is a combination of business strategy, customer-oriented business processes and computer systems that seeks to integrate sustainability into customer relationship management. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the body of knowledge of marketing, business management and computer systems research domains by classifying in research categories the current state of knowledge on SCRM, by analysing the major research streams and by identifying a future research agenda in each research category. Design/methodology/approach – To identify, select, collect, synthesise, analyse and evaluate all research published on SCRM, providing a complete insight in this research area, the PRISMA methodology, content analysis and bibliometric tools are used. Findings – In total, 139 papers were analysed to assess the trend of the number of papers published and the number of citations of these papers; to identify the top contributing countries, authors, institutions and sources; to reveal the findings of the major research streams; to develop a classification framework composed by seven research categories (CRM as a key factor for enterprise sustainability, SCRM frameworks, SCRM computer tools and methods, case studies, SCRM and sustainable supply chain management, sustainable marketing and knowledge management) in which academics could expand SCRM research; and to establish future research challenges. Social implications – This paper have an important positive social and environmental impact for society because it will lead to an increase in the number of green and socially conscious customers with an ethical behavior, while also transforming business processes, products and services, making them more sustainable. Originality/value – Customer relationship management in the age of sustainable development is an increasing research area. Nevertheless, to the authors’ knowledge, there are no systematic literature reviews that identify the major research streams, develop a classification framework, analyse the evolution in this research field and propose a future research agenda.