Analyzing the impact of knowledge management on CRM success: The mediating effects of organizational factors

Customer relationship management (CRM) and knowledge management (KM) have become key strategic tool for all companies, especially in the current competitive environment. Moreover, customer knowledge is an important issue for CRM implementation. Reviewing the literature, we found many studies that analyze the crucial role played by KM initiatives as determinants of the success of CRM. Moreover, we found also diverse studies that show high rates of failure when implementing that strategy, so there is still no integrated conceptual framework to guide companies to their successful implementation. In this paper, with data of 153 Spanish hotels, we examine the relationships between KM and CRM success using a structural equation model. The main contribution is that having knowledge management capabilities is not sufficient for the success of CRM, but there are other factors to consider. In particular, organizational factors indeed impact CRM success and they appear to be intermediaries of the impact of other factors (KM capabilities/technological/customer orientation factors) in the success of CRM (in financial and marketing terms). (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.