The Salesperson's Use of Global Customer Relationship Management Systems

We explore the factors affecting sales people's use of global Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems. Previous research focusing on global CRM has largely explored the macro level issues of CRM and CRM system implementation at the company or industry level ignoring people who actually use the global CRM systems in their everyday work. Neglect of the behavior of sales people may have misled the entire CRM research field, which has looked at the issue from a perspective of economic and technological advancement, without realizing that the root cause for the conflicting research results can be traced to the individual level. Hence, we problematize the extant research and propose that cultural context and distance, Global Account Management Programs, and perceived customer information quality affect the sales person's use of global CRM systems. Our paper concludes with avenues for future research in the area.