Effects of Electronic Customer Relationship Management on Customer Satisfaction: A Temporal Model

The proliferation of eCRM and its alarming failure rate call for a better understanding of the relationship between eCRM and its immediate objective: customer satisfaction. In this paper, we develop, operationalize and empirically test a temporal model explaining the relationship between three categories of eCRM (i.e., pre-purchase, at-purchase and post-purchase eCRM) and online customer satisfaction at two phases of the customer lifecycle, i.e., attraction and retention. The results of a longitudinal survey of the online customers of hardware retailers provided strong support for the model and revealed the dominant role of pre-purchase eCRM in satisfaction formation at the attraction phase and the prevalence of post-purchase eCRM at the retention phase. Specific eCRM features are identified as satisfaction drivers, providing insights for important paradigm shifts.