International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 7, No. 1, pp.

57-69 (2009)

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THE IMPACT OF A CUSTOMER PROFILE AND CUSTOMER PARTICIPATION ON CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT PERFORMANCE
Ji-Tsung Ben Wu*, I-Ju Lin and Ming-Hsien Yang Department of Information Management Fu-Jen Catholic University Taipei Hsien (24205), Taiwan

ABSTRACT
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is one important application for e-business. Two important factors influencing CRM performance are: customer profiles and customer participation. The result of this experimental study demonstrates that the use of customer profiles improves the customers perception of the quality of goods and increases the effectiveness of Customer Relationship Management (CRM). In addition, customer participation can improve customers perceptions the quality of goods and enhance performance of CRM through perceived participation. The results indicate that the customer profiles and customer participation are two crucial factors for companies to maintain good customer relations. Keywords: Customer Relationship Management, Customer Profile, Customer Participation

1. INTRODUCTION
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Companies are now more than ever focusing on high customer retention and maintaining good long term customer relationships [3][16][35]. Customer relationships management (CRM) is a high customer retention strategy. It is very important to know more about customers needs and offer customized products and services in order to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty [22][28]. Two main strategies, collecting customers' profiles and promoting customer participation, are used to probe customers' needs. CRM research highlights that knowledge of customers is critical, but the tacit knowledge of customers is not much emphasized. Companies need to make CRM efforts effective [17][23]. Therefore, corporations should seek new interaction mechanisms to improve customer relations by achieving complete communication with customers, building partnerships with customers, and getting more non-structured information about customers that is leveraged to drive CRM activities. Regarding the urgent demand for tacit information about customers, customer participation in the service research should be considered as one important source of knowledge about customers, in addition to customer profiles which are acquired by database technologies. Also, gaining customers active participation is able to directly increase their perception of the services provided by the companies.
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The main objectives of this paper are to (1) discuss and integrate related research to infer a conceptual model which includes the customer profile, customer participation, and measures of CRM performance; (2) to investigate the relationship between the degree of using a customer profile and customers perceptions of the quality of goods; and (3) to investigate the relationship between the degree of customer participation and customers perceptions of the quality of goods and CRM performance.

2. LITERATURE REVIEW
To research the impact of customer profile and customer participation on the CRM performances, this study examines the theories of CRM, customer profiling and customer participation. 2.1 Customer Relationship Management The new marketing paradigm is based on knowledge and experience [24][30][31]. The knowledge-based marketing paradigm indicates that corporations need to know more about customers; and an experience-based marketing paradigm suggests bringing more interactions into customer related activities. Since the 90s, there have arisen numerous synonymous terms: customer management, customer information systems, customer value management, customer care and sometimes customer centricity or customer-centric management, but now clearly, the term Customer Relationship Management has become the most widely used [6][20].

Corresponding author: benwu@im.fju.edu.tw

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009) There are different dimensions of participation, including personal interaction, information sharing, and responsible behavior. This suggests that participation has a positive impact on customer's perceived product/service quality, customer satisfaction, and a mixed impact on retention. Different aspects of participation do not contribute equally in these models. Specifically, personal interaction was found to have more significant effects while the information sharing was thought to be of particular significance from a conceptual perspective [13]. There is a similar result in the new product development research area. It indicates that through close interactions with customers, designers can accurately identify market requirements, quickly refine product specification, and reduce time for marketing and thus remain more competitive [11][27]. Little CRM research has put specific effort into getting and using non-structured information about customers [23]. Customer participation can fulfill the shortage of application towards gaining tacit customer knowledge. Customer participation in the delivery of service processes has been found to be highly related to customers perceived quality of service, customer satisfaction and new products performance [13][19]. Customers can contribute their own information in the process of participation and also get information about the corporation. This is a two-way communication between buyers and sellers which positively impacts the CRMs performance. Similar discussions are involved in numbers of different research areas. In service research, customer participation refers to the contribution of customer information and the effort spent in the process of service encounters [8][13][26][36]. Customer participation influences the quality of service [13][19]. In information system development research, user participation has been found to influence users perception of system success and user satisfaction [41]. In advertising research, scholars look at the impact which customer involvement, advertising and products have on purchasing decisions [43]. Table 1 identifies similar concepts regarding different participation types and customer roles in service or product delivery processes value chain.

CRM is an interactive process that turns customer information into customer relationships through actively using and learning from information. It is a cycle for encompassing major group of actions: knowledge discovery, market planning, customer interaction, and analysis refinement [7][35]. Ryals and Knox [32] determined that the philosophical bases of CRM are: relationship orientation, customer retention, and superior customer value created through process management. Successful implementation of CRM requires cross-functional reorganization, especially marketing and IT, to work closely together to maximize the return on customer information. The impact of the use of IT on marketing includes the fact that database marketing grew in significance in the late 1980s [24]. In summary, CRM integrates practices of database marketing to support short-term market tactics and conceptual frame to relationship marketing to develop long-term customer relationship strategies. 2.2 Customer Profiles Some characteristics correlate positively with companies performing well in customer relationship management: excellent products, excellent management, and the informed use of knowledge about customers. An insufficient knowledge base of customers limits the value which a company can offer to those customers [37][40]. Knowing customers better, a corporation can precisely invest in valuable customers and reduce the cost spent on poorly performing customers [16][35]. The basic component of customer knowledge comes from a customer profile that is obtained by the use of a database and data mining technologies used in organizations [1]. Building customer profiles is one of the most popular strategies for knowing more about customers. In summary, using a customer profile is the technique which converts raw information about customers into the strategic-support knowledge that reinforces the value of goods which companies offer customers. 2.3 Customer Participation The customer profile is a more structured part of customer knowledge; whereas a more non-structured part could come from customer participation. In the service research area, customers who contribute information or efforts in the service complete the process with the service provider. They fulfill the process together while the service is produced and consumed at the same time [8][13] [14] [26] [36]. For example, patients describe their own symptoms to doctors. It makes the process of diagnosis go more smoothly. These service performances are heavily influenced by customer efforts and the information they themselves provide [4][13][19].

3. THE RESEARCH FRAMEWORK AND HYPOTHESIS

Figure 1 presents this studys conceptual model as it has been derived from the preceding discussion. There are two main kinds of knowledge sources about customers: customer profiles and customer participation. The former represents the use

J. T. B. Wu et al.: The Impact of a Customer Profile and Customer Participation of IT to acquire and create information about customers in the organization and the latter shows there are two-way communications and interactions between the corporation and customers. The CRM

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performance construct includes three measurements: customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention [7][9][18][22].

Table 1: Customer roles in different stages of the product/service value chain Stage Type Related Research New Service or Customer-oriented design; focus group; close contact [11][15] Product Development between designer and customer Manufacture of Product; Customer participation; visit factory; customer provide [2][8][13] [19][34] Service Encounter information [36][43] Advertising Customer involvement [10] [43] Service Encounter; Customer self-subscribe which channel and time that [8][13] [19][34] Product Delivery and Sell the product delivery [36][43] In addition to getting a customer profile to identify customer needs, corporations also need to seek solution to gain more tacit information from customers to know them better [23]. This situation indicates that corporations should build certain channels and launch activities to enable the transformation of tacit information with customers. Based on preceding discussion on customer participation, it is possible for corporations to interact with customers and get insights of customer needs through customer participation. Getting customers to participate in value delivery processes helps customers to know corporation ability better and raises the customers' perception on goods. The customer participation also has positive effects on customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention [11][13][19]. To examine this proposition, the300 second null hypothesis of this research is proposed: H2: Customer participation could not influence the perceived goods quality that companies offer to customers. 3. The effect of goods quality on CRM performance The service quality the companies provide to customers positively affects the customer relationship quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty. The quality of goods will influence the customers buying decision-making. When quality of goods is higher than customers expectation, customers are motivated to buy the goods. The goods quality depends on customers subjective perceptions of how these high quality goods will bring them benefits [39]. High perception of goods quality leads to high customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. To examine this proposition, the third null hypothesis of this research is proposed: H3: The perceived quality of goods could not influence performance of CRM. H3a: The perceived quality of goods could not influence customer satisfaction.

Figure 1: Conceptual model 1. The effect of the customer profile on perceived goods quality Goods mean the service or product which companies offer to customers. Although there are many measurements to examine the quality of products, customers usually determine the quality of products on the basis of their own subjective points of view. From this viewpoint, the main factor concerning a products quality should be based on the degree of conformation to customers demands. Of course it is harder to measure the quality of a service when the goods are intangible [26]. The output of service is the process itself. The judgment of service quality should be based on customer experiences and their perception of the process [27]. The above discussion shows that it is crucial to measure customers' perception of goods quality. A customer profile is a base form of customer knowledge. By obtaining and analyzing customer profiles, corporations can develop products and services to fit the customers needs. Showing customers that the company is using their profiles to provide customized goods will also lead users to raise their perception of quality. To examine this proposition, the first null hypothesis of this research is proposed: H1: Companies that obtain and use customer profiles could not influence its perceived goods quality their goods offer to customers. 2. The effect of customer participation on perceived goods quality and CRM performance

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009) demand for on-line bank, and their interest in finance management in the personal-data questionnaire. Each subject in the same group was then exposed to one of the four scenarios in proper sequence of the subjects who finished the personal-data questionnaires in the first step in the experiment process. Table 2: Labels of manipulated treatments High Low Customer Customer Profile Profile High HH LH Customer Participation Low HL LL Customer Participation Table 3: Label of each variable Description Label Customer Profile K Customer Participation P Goods Quality Q Customer Satisfaction S Customer Loyalty L Customer Retention R Table 4: Experiment design

H3b: The perceived quality of goods could not influence customer loyalty. H3c: The perceived quality of goods could not influence customer retention.

4. RESEARCH DESIGN
To test the relationships of customer profile and customer participation on perceived goods quality and performance of CRM, this research employs an experiment with scenarios of services encountered and a recall-base questionnaire. The primary advantage of using scenarios is that they eliminate difficulties of observation on the use of customer profiles and the practice of customer participation in organizations everyday operation. Also, the use of scenarios reduces biases from memory lapses, rationalization tendencies, and consistency factors, which are common in results based on retrospective self-reports [33]. Recently, an on-line bank has prompted their on-line services and this would be a focal development in the future of the banking industry. This is the reason that this research used on-line bank services as scenarios and focused on five on-line services: credit card bonuses and gift exchange services; high amount transaction confirmation; payment reminder services; comments; and new service development conference to narrow down the complexity and control the variable manipulation more precisely. 4.1 Sampling Frames and Data Collection Methods The sample for this experiment was composed of students from four departments of EMBA at the Fu-Jen University. There were 119 EMBA students involved in the experiment and the data were collected using individually completed questionnaires after the last step of the experiment. Of the 119 subjects, 96 subjects questionnaires were valid. Among these 96 subjects, 68 were male, 28 were female. 4.2 Experimental Design The experiment employed a 2X2 between-subjects design, in which customer profile and customer participation were manipulated. Four treatments are shown in Table 2 and each treatment is a scenario that represents a combination of one of two customer profile scenarios with one of two customer participation scenarios. Table 3 presents a list of model variables and table 4 shows the labels of each treatment and observation variable. All the subjects were first grouped according to three conditions: their answer to experience, recent

This study deemed these three conditions would affect the perception of the subjects during the process. The separation of the subjects was based on these conditions. Then the subjects were assigned according to their questionnaire filling time. This would reach random sampling. Table 5 shows the grouping process and Table 6 shows the whole experiment process and the description of what the subjects did in each step.

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Table 5: The grouping process The subjects were asked to fill out personal data questionnaire. The data were stored into the DB. The program allocated the subjects who had the same choices of three conditions into the same array. The program drew each record from one array and assigned into one of four treatments in turn. After the assignment was done, each subjects browser was directed to the homepage of each scenario the subject belong to. Table 6: The experiment process Stage Step Personal-data questionnaire Preexperiment Experiment instruction Waiting for assignment Login in experiment system Customer accounts data Practice Transfer accounts for credit card payment Confirmation of transfer Transfer success and the instruction of next step Credit cards bonus and gift exchange service Confirmation of gifts, rest of bonus points and receivers address The setting of payment inform service The setting of high amount transaction confirmation Advice zone The invitation of new service development conference Data Collection Observation variable collection questionnaires data Description The subjects were asked to fill out the questionnaire and set their own account and password which would be used to login the experiment system as realized scenarios of on-line bank. The explanation of specific terms and notice. The program drew data from the personal-data questionnaire to assign subject into one treatment of experiment. Subjects used their own account and password to login the on-line bank of the experiment. The first page was subjects accounts data which was default value represented the scenarios of on-line bank. Subjects were asked to perform the transfer used the on-bank interface which was a practice for subjects to familiar the operation of experiment on-line bank system and also a cue that the subject was one of on-bank customer. This step was the beginning of experiments manipulation. The different semantics and operation on the page of on-line bank represented each manipulation of the experiment. The different semantics and operation on the page of on-line bank represented each manipulation of the experiment. The different semantics and operation on the page of on-line bank represented each manipulation of the experiment. This step was skipped at the low degree customer participations manipulation to represent the manipulation of low degree customer participation. The different semantics and operations on the page of on-line bank represented each manipulation of the experiment. This was the last step of experiment to ask subjects to fill out the questionnaires based on the experience of previously operations of the on-line bank system. organization has acquired the customers information by different kinds of channels or systems to transform this information into practical instruments to provide customized goods. This study manipulated low and high degree of customer profiles by the different semantic descriptions on the webpage, such as these gifts are prepared for you based on your past transactions via our on-line banking service as the cue and let the subjects believe that this on-line banking system provided customized service base on their own profiles and that this would be a high customer profile degree. After the subjects logged

Experiment

4.3 Manipulation of Factors and Measurement of Variables Customer profile and customer participation are two independent variables of this study. Based on the previous research discussed above, each of the two independent variables was manipulated as high and low degree and represented as an on-line banking system. The details of manipulation and the definition of independent variables are discussed below. 4.4 Customer Profile Customer profile variable indicated that the

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009) treatment didnt have these options. Table 8 shows the details of the manipulated customer participation. Table 9 shows the detail of each manipulation treatment. LL indicates Low in Customer Profile and Low in Customer Participation. LH indicates Low in Customer Profile and High in Customer Participation. HL indicates High in Customer Profile and Low in Customer Participation. HH indicates High in Customer Profile and High in Customer Participation. 4.6 Questionnaire After going through all of the experiment steps, the subjects were asked to fill out a questionnaire. The questionnaire is divided into two sections: the first section contains four questions to check whether the subject perceived the proper scenarios in the right manipulation treatment; the second section contains 20 questions concerning the intermediary and dependent variables, including perceived goods quality, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, and customer retention. All the questions employed the 7 points likert scales with numbers 7-1 progressively representing very strongly agree to very strongly disagree and positive semantic statements. Table 10 presents the questionnaire for variables.

into the system, the screen showed the customers account information. The customers name was drawn from the subjects personal data and all the account information entered was the default value, so all the subjects saw the same information, which allowed them to be familiar with and understand their accounts' information in this experiment. Table 7 shows the details of customer profile manipulated. 4.5 Customer Participation Customer participation means customers have to contribute a certain amount of effort or information in the process of purchasing products or services. This variable in the study indicated that the organization had built mechanisms and also invited customers to participate actively. This study manipulated this variable by supplying different flexibilities of services for customers in the low and high customer participation treatments. In the high customer participation treatment, the subjects had more than one option based on their own demand; while there was only one choice for the subjects in the low participation treatment. For example, the subjects in high participation could decide both the means and the time to be informed about the due date of a payment, but the subjects in the low participation

Low Degree of Customer Profile

High Degree of Customer Profile

Table 7: Detail description of manipulation of customer profile Definition Descriptions of Manipulation Customer personal data were drawn from the Customer personal data recorded questionnaire of the first step of experiment and the customer account data were designed as the default value by the system of the system in advance. The records of customers personal data on the system Recognizing and contacting were displayed with proper descriptions on the web-page customer by system interface. Customer personal data were drawn from the Customer personal and questionnaire of the first step of experiment and the transactional data recorded by customer account and the historical transaction data were system designed as the default value of the system in advance. There are predictive customers The records of the customers personal, transactional and demands of services and also analytical information on the system were differential customer credit represented by the proper descriptions on the web-page displayed on the system. interface. Table 8: Detail description of manipulation of customer participation Definition Descriptions of manipulation

Low Degree of Customer Participation

There are no customer participate mechanisms widespread built in the customer contact system of the organization. There are widespread built customer participation mechanisms in the customer contact system of the organization and invite customer to participate actively.

Subjects cannot compose the form of service content by their own need and have no channel to communicate or give advice to company by the web interface.

High Degree of Customer Participation

Subjects can decide which form of service content base their own need and have an advice zone to communicate or give advice to the company by the web interface.

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Table 9: Description of four treatments LH HL HH There is statement There is statement emphasis Exchange by bonus emphasis that the gift list that the gift list were points, bonus with were referred to subjects Credit card referred to subjects Exchange by money and allow bonus and gift transaction history and bonus points. transaction history and offer each customer to offer only one way to exchange service three ways to exchange as in draw bonus in exchange as in LL LH treatment. advance. treatment. There is statement emphasis There is statement that the default amount and emphasis that the default High amount way of notification were Default amount Subjects can decide transaction amount and way of referred to each subjects and way of which amount and notification were confirmation exercise history and subject notification. way of notification. service referred to subjects can change the default value exercise history. on the webpage. There is statement emphasis There is statement that the amount and way of emphasis that the default Payment Default amount Subjects can decide notification were referred to amount and way of each subjects exercise notification and way of which amount and notification were history and each subject can service notification. way of notification. referred to each subjects change the default value on exercise history. the webpage. This page is showed No this page in No this page in the web This page is showed up Advice zone up when finish the the web system. system. when finish the last step. last step. There is statement There is statement emphasis emphasis that the new The invitation of that the new services were Using the form new service Invite the subject to service in advisement of referred to subjects exercise participate. development was referred to each advertisement. history and invite subject to subjects exercise conference participate. history. LL Table 10: Questionnaire Construct Subjects perception of the using customer profile by on-line bank system. Subjects perceived participation. Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Empathy Perceived usefulness Process satisfaction Decision-making satisfaction Total satisfaction Positive attitude Word-of-mouth communications Purchase intentions Price sensitivity Complaining behavior

Subjects Perception Check (4 items) Goods Quality (5 items) Customer Satisfaction (4 items) Customer Loyalty (6 items)

Modified from [42] Modified from [29]

Modified from [12][21][33][36]

Modified from [5][25]

Customer Retention Consumed the offer again (1 item)

Modified from [18] reliability using the Cronbach Alpha coefficient. The results are presented in table 11. All Cronbach alpha values reach the level of generally considered acceptable reliability.

5. RESULTS
5.1 Data Validation To measure the internal consistency of the collected data, this study assessed the instruments

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009) The results show that the use of a customer profile reflects customers' perception of the quality of goods (p=0.027). Thus null hypothesis H1 can be rejected. That is, the degree of using customer profile by a company is positively related to customers perception of goods quality. This means the subjects have perceived that the service was designed based on their historic transactions and so they were more satisfied, which raised their perception of the goods quality. 5.3 The Effect of Customer Participation The results indicated that customer participation is not significantly related to the subjects perception of goods quality, customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention (see table 18). Thus there is no significant evidence to reject the null hypotheses 2 and 4. Wu and Marakas [41] suggest that perceived participation should be an intermediary between participation and user satisfaction in the information system development research area. It will be discussed later of this paper to see if the perceived participation makes a difference.

The questions were adapted from relative research and examined by two experts. Questions were modified to reflect problems encountered by the pretest subjects. The content validity and face validity are considered acceptable. Table 12 shows all dependent variables mean and stander deviations in the different treatments. To ensure the subjects viewed the scenarios in the right aspect, this doubt was tested using the two-tailed t-test. The results are presented in table 13, 14, 15, and 16. These results show that most of the subjects perceived the right scenario and the high and low degree of manipulation also made significant differences. This study used an F-test to evaluate the effect of individual differences in perception of scenarios. Table 17 shows the results. The results show that individual differences make no effect on each dependent variable. 5.2 The Effect of Customer Profile Table 18 shows the results of the main effects of two independent variables on all dependent variables.

Table 11: Cronbach alpha coefficient value Constructs Number of Items Perceived Customer Profile Using 2 Perceived Participation 2 Goods Quality 5 Customer Satisfaction 4 Customer Loyalty 6 Customer Retention 1

0.78 0.66 0.86 0.89 0.80 1.00

Customer Profile Customer Participation ALL

H L H L

Table 12: Mean and St. Dev. of dependence variable Goods Customer Customer Quality Satisfaction Loyalty Mean St. Dev. Mean St. Dev. Mean St. Dev. 5.22 1.07 5.26 1.11 4.92 0.85 4.68 1.31 5.00 1.18 4.63 1.13 5.08 1.17 5.27 1.00 4.83 0.88 4.85 1.27 5.01 1.26 4.73 1.11 4.96 1.22 5.13 1.15 4.78 1.00

Customer Retention Mean St. Dev. 5.31 1.18 5.40 1.14 5.29 1.18 5.41 1.13 5.35 1.15

Table 13: Mean and St. Dev. of high and low customer profile Manipulation Treatment Subjects H 49 Perception of Customer Profile Manipulation L 47 Table 14: T-test result of high and low customer profile T-value D. F. Perception of Customer Profile Manipulation 3.328 94 *p<0.05

Mean 5.73 4.75

St. dev. 1.24 1.63

P-value 0.001*

Table 15: Mean and St. Dev. of high and low customer participation Manipulation Treatment Subjects Mean St. Dev. H 45 5.46 1.17 Perceived Participation L 51 4.89 1.52

J. T. B. Wu et al.: The Impact of a Customer Profile and Customer Participation Table 16: T-test result of high and low customer participation T-value D. F. P-value Perceived Participation 2.016 94 0.047* *p<0.05 Table 17: Effect of individual differences Goods Quality FPvalue value 0.472 0.496 0.542 0.743 0.095 0.910 0.576 0.452 0.006 0.938 Customer Satisfaction FPvalue value 0.435 0.513 1.593 0.181 0.571 0.569 0.666 0.419 0.947 0.336 Customer Loyalty FPvalue value 2.188 0.146 0.795 0.559 0.002 0.998 1.003 0.322 0.002 0.966 Customer Retention FPvalue value 0.220 0.641 1.998 0.097 0.906 0.412 0.593 0.445 0.024 0.878

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Gender Industry Income The Experiment of Used On-line Bank Financial Management Need

Table 18: Results of MANOVA Goods Quality Customer Satisfaction Customer Loyalty Customer Retention Goods Quality Customer Satisfaction Customer Loyalty Customer Retention F-value 5.033 1.303 2.002 0.140 1.064 1.440 0.333 0.303 P-value 0.027* 0.257 0.160 0.709 0.305 0.233 0.565 0.583

Customer Profile

Customer Participation *p<0.05

5.4 The Effect of the Quality of Goods The result of the effect of the perceived quality of goods on the CRM performance is presented in table 18. It shows that goods quality has a significant effect on the customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention (see Table 19), thus hypothesis 3 is rejected. Table 19: The effect of goods quality F-value P-value Customer 9.313 0.000* Satisfaction Goods Customer 4.698 0.000* Quality Loyalty Customer 3.013 0.000* Retention *p<0.05

and customer perception of goods quality, customer satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. Table 20: The effect of customer participation to perceived participation F-value P-value Customer Perceived 4.063 0.047* Participation Participation *p<0.05 Table 21: The effect of perceived participation F-value p-value Goods 7.78 0.000* Quality Customer 9.55 0.000* Perceived Satisfaction Participation Customer 4.861 0.000* Loyalty Customer 3.845 0.000* Retention *p<0.05

6. DISCUSSION
According to Wu and Marakas [41], perceived participation is an intermediary between user participation and user perceived success and satisfaction on the information system development. Thus, whether the same results emerge in this study is important. Table 20 and 21 shows the effect of perceived participation. The results show that perceived participation is indeed intermediate between customer participation

7. CONCLUSION
Based on the finding of this study, its necessary to modify the research framework to suit the results of these tests. Figure 2 shows the final model.

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009) Customer-sales associate retail relationships, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 72, No. 3, pp. 223-247. Bienstock, C. C. and Stafford, M. R., 2006, Measuring involvement with the service: A further investigation of scale validity and dimensionality, The Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Vol. 14, No. 3, pp. 209-221. Bloemer, J., Ruyter, K. and Wetzels, M., 1999, Linking perceived service quality and service loyalty: A multi-dimensional perspective, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 33, No. 11/12, pp. 1082-1106. Brown, S. A., 2000, Customer Relationship Management, John Wiley & Sons Canada, Ltd, Toronto. Buckinx, W., Verstraeten, G. and Poel, D. Van den, 2007, Predicting customer loyalty using the internal transactional database, Expert Systems with Applications, Vol. 32, No.1, pp. 125-134. Carman, J. M., 1990, Consumer perceptions of service quality: An assessment of the SERVQUAL dimensions, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 66, No. 1, pp. 33-55. Chou, T. J., 2000, The management of customer value and establishment of customer loyalty, e-Business Executive Report, Vol. 7, pp. 21-29. Csipak, J. J., Chebat, J. C. and Venkatesan, V., 1995, Channel structure, consumer involvement and perceived service quality: An empirical study of the distribution of a service, Journal of Marketing Management, Vol. 11, pp. 227-241. Datar, S., Jordan, C., Kekre, S., Rajiv, S. and Srinivasan, K., 1996, New product development structures: The effect of customer overload on post-concept time to market, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol. 13, pp. 325-333. Davis, F. D, 1989, Perceived usefulness, perceived ease of use, and user acceptance of information technology, MIS Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 3, pp. 319-339. Ennew, C. T. and Binks, M. R., 1999, Impact of participative service relationships on quality, satisfaction and retention: An exploratory study, Journal of Business Research, Vol. 46, pp. 121-132. Huber, F., Herrmann, A. and Henneberg, S. C., 2007, Measuring customer value and satisfaction in services transactions, scale development, validation and cross-cultural comparison, International Journal of Consumer Studies, Vol. 31, No. 6, pp. 554-564. Huovila, P. and Sern K. J., 1998,

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Figure 2: Modified model This study investigated the effects of customer profiles and customer participation on the quality of goods. The findings suggest that the organizations would be wise to apply customer profiles into practical characteristics of products or services. This will raise the customers perception goods quality and further affects the CRM performance. In this study, the condition was simulated. It can be argued that the effect would be greater when the customers see that their real profiles are used. Based on this studys findings, the impact of customer participation on goods quality and CRM performance is mediated by perceived participation. In this study, users did not actually interact with representatives from the company. It can be argued that the effect would be greater when the customers interact with real people. This process changes customers attitudes towards this organization and reflects customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention. Although every effort was made to enact the experiment scenarios in something like a near-real environment, limitations do exist because the subjects knew that they were participating in an experiment and had different levels of perception as customers of an on-line bank. These factors will naturally cause some inaccuracy in the results when compared to real-world cases. Overall, the research discussed in this article explores the different dimensions of CRM theoretical development drawn from service research area in the context of the service industry as a main trend in the business world. These findings can be considered as the elements of building a strong customer relationship that ultimately is needed in order to survive in todays competitive environment.

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International Journal of Electronic Business Management, Vol. 7, No. 1 (2009) Yang, H. L., 2000, The impacts of customer expectation and participation on service failure attribution in extended education, Institute of Business Management, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan, Master Thesis. Zaichkowsky, J. L., 1985, Measuring the involvement construct, Journal of Consumer Research, Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 341-352. I-Ju Lin received her M.B.A. degree from the Department of Information Management, Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taiwan. Her research interests are Customer Relationship Management and Knowledge Management. Ming-Hsien Yang received his Ph.D. degree from National Taiwan University, Taiwan. He is now the dean of the College of Management, Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taiwan and a professor in the Department of Information Management, Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taiwan. His research interests include Electronic Business, Collaborative Commerce, and Business Process Reengineering. (Received February 2009, revised March 2009, accepted March 2009)

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS

Ji-Tsung Ben Wu received his D.B.A. degree from Indiana University, U.S.A. He is now an assistant professor in the Department of Information Management, Fu-Jen Catholic University, Taiwan. His research interests are Knowledge Management and Web 2.0.

J. T. B. Wu et al.: The Impact of a Customer Profile and Customer Participation

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* 510

*benwu@im.fju.edu.tw