Customer relationship management (CRM) has become an increasingly important topic for marketers. We have seen a growth in the amount of attention given to CRM in both academic and practitioner journals. For example, currently The Teradata Center for Customer Relationship Management at Duke University is sponsoring a special section on the topic of CRM, which will be published in the October 2005 issue of Journal of Marketing. In this forum, i.e., Research Interests of the AMA Global Marketing SIG, Susan M. Mudambi of Temple University was the first to directly address the importance of Global Customer Relationship Management (August 2002). Given its increased importance to the field of global marketing Bill Lundstrom of Cleveland State University moderated a discussion of global CRM. Numerous research issues arose during the session.  Following are three central areas around which the discussion focused. 

1. Friction between sales and CRM.  Sales and Customer Relationship Management programs compete for resources.  Both involve interaction with customers.  Sales focuses on acquisition and CRM on retention.  Both involve relationships, often with the same parties, but the nature of the association differs, as does information needed for decisions.  CRM methods often feature technical applications and they can be based on extensive data collection and sophisticated analytical procedures.  A sale, as a particular type of relationship, is high touch, interpersonal, and often looks for an emotional response.  Cultural characteristics that contribute to relationship success would be expected to have a detrimental effect on achievement of challenging sales goals.  Research investigating how firms balance the potential friction between sales and CRM strategies and tactics is greatly needed. Furthermore, the influence of country culture on efficiency and effectiveness of sales, CRM and the interaction of sales and CRM on firm performance is warranted. Through greater investigation of sales and CRM jointly in global operations we may be able to better understand the reasons for the uneasy co-existence between these strategies and tactics. 

2. Relationship outcomes.   Key elements of a relationship were identified as trust, caring, communications, honesty, and efficiency.  The manifestation of these behavioral and emotional variables needs to be developed for different cultures. Although scholars have begun to theorize and empirically test cross-cultural differences in many relationship outcome constructs, we have only begun to gain an understanding of how these constructs vary across cultures. Issues of conceptual equivalence, measurement equivalence, etc. abound. Cross-country and cross-cultural comparisons of these constructs in a differing contexts (e.g., supply chain, firm-consumer, etc.) would help to shed light on why some CRM strategies and tactics work/don’t work in various settings.  The nature of a business relationship in different cultures has not been adequately studied.  Understanding a relationship that combines two or more cultures should then be undertaken. 

3. Ethical Issues.  The employment of CRM has raised a number of ethical issues domestically. When moving to the world stage the complexity and intensity of ethical concerns increases tremendously. Availability and use of information of private, semi-private, or transactional information for making decisions is a major issue.  Information privacy is viewed quite differently around the world.  Laws, norms and customs all set forth different standards for "privacy." Privacy as an obstacle to information flows and needs considerable attention. 

In summary, one clear take-away from the Round Table discussion was the richness of the topic addressed – CRM.  CRM provides numerous opportunities for global marketing researchers to contribute to improved practice and economic development.  Conceptual and empirical research on these topics will provide better understanding of emerging marketing management practices and of the global environment we live in.