A review of customer relationship management: successes, advances, pitfalls and futures

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide academics and practitioners working with customer relationship management (CRM) with a review of key topics, such as advances in CRM, the shifting role of consumers, issues with conceptualisation and consumer exploitation. The authors further integrate concepts of fairness, trust and paradoxes of one‐to‐one marketing, which are little researched within customer management. As a result, the authors suggest eight propositions for improving the CRM scheme. Design/methodology/approach This paper reviews extant literatures in CRM, with a particular emphasis on the pitfalls of CRM. Findings The authors find that the risks of depleting customer trust as they perceive themselves being exploited by firm's CRM offerings should be openly discussed, as it poses a significant threat to the CRM scheme if it is overly used and misused. Practical implications It is proposed that the concept of dual value‐creation and win‐win relationships are fundamental to successful implementation. However, the danger of implementing CRM in such a way as to lead customers to believe that they are worse off requires more research. Managers must therefore define their CRM, understand their pitfalls and look at where their CRM is headed. Social implications Advances in CRM must consider issues of fairness, transparency, honesty, trust and with the emergence of social media, understand how CRM will adapt and immerse itself in such a future. Originality/value In total, eight propositions are made about CRM's successes, advances, pitfalls and futures. A focus is on the fairness of CRM and a new definition is offered.