Research On Customer Relationship Management For SMEs Based On Internet

With the rapid development and popularity of Internet and the approach of customer economy era, enterprises all over the world are experiencing a profound transformation. The business environment of enterprises has undergone tremendous changes, and the traditional business model is increasingly challenged, particularly in the current significant trend-homogenization of products and services. It is growingly difficult for enterprises to obtain a unique competitive advantage, and the focus of competition among enterprises is shifting from products and services to customers gradually. To enterprises, customer resources have become the most important resources. A number of enterprises, especially those in the developed countries, such as the United States and the Europe, have regarded customer relationship management (CRM) as a magic weapon to promote their core competitiveness.At present, in the United States, the Europe and other developed countries, CRM is at a stage of rapid development, while, in China, it is still at the initial stage. Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs), are the main driving forces of economic growth, and play an important role in the national economy, due to their competitive disadvantages, need more rely on the help of CRM to gain competitive advantages. However, the CRM of the traditional model was originated from the large-scale enterprise applications, it brings about a series of problems:enormous investment, complex systems, long-cycle implementation and expensive usage costs, which have comprised the irreconcilable contradictions with the features of the major SMEs, such as widespread lack of funds, talent shortage, low technological and low management level, resulting in difficulties in the process of the implementation of CRM. On the one hand, CRM maintains a high growth rate annually and at the stage of rapid development, but on the other hand, a lot of practices have turned out that the failure rate of CRM implementation is very high. While domestic and foreign scholars have conducted a great deal of CRM researches, the relevant studies are very fragmented, which are often based on different backgrounds, and from different perspectives to explore CRM and its related issues, thus forming the jungle state of CRM researches, the lack of a clear awareness of the nature of CRM, and the shortage of a unified framework for CRM concepts and theories as a guide. One important reason for the high failure rate of CRM is that the theoretical study of CRM is far behind the CRM business practices, and the any practices lack of theoretical guidance will inevitably face a high risk of failure. By means of the analyses of the informatization basis, demand, technology and market of SMEs, this paper pointed out that the time is ripe for SMEs to implement CRM. Therefore, it is of great significance to implement systematic theoretical research of CRM for SMEs in the Internet environment.First of all, this paper presents a systematic research framework of CRM for SMEs. The framework applies customer value as the inner logic clue and customer lifetime as the external logic clue, and arranges the CRM-related research contents in the following logic system:from customer acquisition, customer segmentation, customer satisfaction and loyalty, customer retention, customer Churn, to CRM implementation strategy. This paper points out that customer value is the core of CRM, and the study of CRM based on customer value renders the inner logic of CRM researches not only clearer, more systematic, but closer to the nature of CRM concepts.Then, this paper further focuses on the analysis of the customer value of SEMs in the Internet environment. On the basis of the analysis of customer value, it sums up three methods of customer value classification:the traditional purchase-based customer value, the customer perception-based customer value, and the customer lifetime-based customer value. Meanwhile, combining with the actual SMEs, and based on the customer perceived value, this paper proposes the customer value model of SMEs, which consists of four dimensions: product perception, price perception, service perception and the relationship perception. At the same time, the affecting factors of this model are analyzed as well. Based on the theory of customer lifetime, this paper puts forward a forecasting model of the value calculation of SMEs. Compared with traditional forecasting models, the new model presents a truer reflection of the customer lifetime value and easier to be applied practically to SMEs.Thirdly, this paper analyzes the current existing problems of customer acquisition of SMEs, and proposes the two-dimensional potential customers and target customer identification model based on customer demand and customer purchasing power. According to this model, all customers can be classified as four categories, thus defining the goal of customer acquisition. By analyzing the channels, process and access methods of customer acquisition in the Internet environment, it studies the customer acquisition model on the basis of the Internet word-of-mouth and Web usage mining, and puts forward two methods to effectively implement customer acquisition in the Internet environment, namely, to take full advantage of Internet word-of-mouth and make full utilization of Web usage mining technology. By analyzing the new features of customer segmentation in the Internet environment, and the defects of the traditional methods of customer segmentation, this paper adopts advanced automated collection techniques of customer data, data mining and automatic recommendation system, creating a process model of customer segmentation of SMEs and analyzing the constituent elements of the model, then proposes an improved density-based K-means clustering algorithm, which is accordingly applied to the segmentation of SMEs customers. The results of the case applications show the effectiveness of the segmentation algorithm.Fourthly, on the basis of the in-depth analysis of the impact factors of the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, and relationship between the customer satisfaction and customer loyalty, this paper puts forward a structural equation model (SEM) of customer satisfaction and customer loyalty of SMEs in the Internet environment, which constitutes 5 latent variables, that is, site quality, customer perceived value, customer satisfaction, customer trust and customer loyalty. It takes the college students as the empirical subjects, and adopts SEM approach to undergo model checking, whose empirical results show that the quality of Web site produces a significant positive effect on customer perceived value and customer perceived value is the most important factor of customer satisfaction. Accordingly, customer satisfaction degree is the most important factor influencing customer loyalty, which plays a significant positive effect on the model, so the overall fit of the model is fine. Aiming at the failure of the traditional CRM model to meet the status quo of needs, it analyzes the advantages of a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model-based CRM of SMEs, a CRM solution for SMEs is proposed based on SaaS model accordingly, and it constructs the logical architecture of the SaaS-based CRM. At the same times, a SaaS-base customer acceptance model is proposed in this paper, and it holds that the factors influencing customer acceptance model mainly involve perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, external variables, customer and service provider. Empirical studies have confirmed the validity of the model and verified the first four factors have a significant positive effect on customer acceptance degree.Finally, this paper points out that the CRM of SaaS model is a good solutions for SMEs to implement of CRM. The SMEs in our country should rely on the CRM of SaaS model as the starting point, and implement CRM from a strategic perspective. In the process of implementation, the SEMs should center on CRM to transform enterprise culture and carry out business process reengineering. SaaS service providers should regard "SMEs as the center" to provide s systematic and integrated CRM solutions consistent with the concept of CRM, and the complete customer lifetime. When selecting the SaaS service provider, the SMEs should attach importance to professional services, ease of use of products, data security and integrity of the solution provided by SaaS service providers.