Shipping, the World's largest industry, consists of sectors and each sector
is approaching the IT revolution in different ways for the achievement of
competitive advantages. Today the shipping industry has expanded
dramatically and it is in the process of harnessing the advancements of
Information Technology in providing added value for the business.
Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is a fast-growing segment of
business software that has been embraced by manufacturers and service
providers in many industries. CRM is about understanding the buying habits
and preferences of the customers and prospects.For a global competitive
market such as shipping, CRM can bring a lot of advantages. But contrary to
what is expected most carriers and logistic providers have yet to launch a
formal CRM program. And few CRM vendors have crafted transportation
industry specific applications.
Considering the good potential of this industry for adopting CRM, the main
contribution of this research would be to the CRM vendors and marketers who
are seeking for a good market in order to launch their product. This
research can help them to influence the adoption process of CRM at
organizational level and also find out what motivates the adoption of CRM
and related technologies in this industry.
With this in mind this research is trying to find out the factors effecting
the adoption of CRM at organizational level in Iran's shipping industry.
The data has been collected from 50 companies which have been selected
randomly. This research is mainly exploratory. Quantitative approach was
used during the whole study.
At the end of this research it was found out that adopter characteristics (
attitude toward change and perceived CRM knowledge) , environmental
hostility ( market uncertainty , environmental hostility ) and perceived
CRM characteristics ( CRM relative advantage, CRM complexity ,CRM
...
