SOCIAL ENTREPRENEURSHIP AND CRM: LINKING THROUGH COMMON FACTORS

Social Entrepreneurship (SE) pertains to execute any business idea for a social, cultural or environmental cause for the benefit to all stakeholders. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) strategies on the other hand focuses on customer acquisition and customer retention. Several research studies proposes that CRM strategies are used by the firm for increasing customer share which is a narrow and short term perspective in market. However, studies on social entrepreneurship suggests that the idea of social entrepreneurship centers around value creation concerning all stakeholders that is broad and long term perspective for any firm. CRM software is developed by the firms only from one perspective of increasing customer base. It will be beneficial for those firms to understand the aspects of SE to develop their products and services with a holistic approach for creating value to all stakeholders rather than just focusing on customer. Accordingly, several research propositions are provided for theoretical understanding on unique features of SE and also the relationship between social entrepreneurship and CRM. Precisely, by reviewing several research papers, we propose the adaptable learning, finding new opportunities to increase its customer base, focus on product and service analysis and networking ability are unique features of social entrepreneurship and innovation, value creation, social value, use of technology for mass customization, employee engagement by building good leadership qualities among employees, knowledge about the customers and continuous learning are unique features of CRM. A systematic study and a conceptual framework have been proposed by authors to develop a link between SE and CRM by investigating common factors between two.