With the forecasted expansion of electronic marketplaces and the Internet, opportunities for businesses will abound. However, the greatest challenge facing them lies in their ability to sustain their profitability as the competition among them draws keener. To help distinguish themselves, and gain or maintain their competitive advantage, many businesses have turned to customer relationship mana...

A growing ‘chasm’ separates consumers and the adversarial buyer-seller practices of commerce. CRM systems focusing on maximizing transaction values are “ultimately doomed.” In response, Zuboff and Maxmin (2002) have outlined the contours of the new enterprise logic based upon “relationship economics.” Their paradigm recognizes the critical need for satisfying ‘new’ consumers’ needs for psycholo...

There are several motivations for CRM systems adoption, some of them aligned with the results of CRM implementation. This paper presents the main findings of a study undertaken among a sample of Portuguese large enterprises, identifying and discussing the main motivations and results of the adoption of CRM systems. It was possible to conclude that the main results of CRM adoption reflect the ma...

Many businesses have turned to customer relationship management (CRM) to strategically position themselves in electronic marketplaces with information and communication technologies (ICT). With greater emphasis placed on the application of technology, does the infusion of ICT influence a business’ ability to retain its customers? This study examined the relationships among three CRM elements be...

Four mineral oil certified reference materials (CRMs), NMIJ CRM 7902-a, CRM 7903-a, CRM 7904-a, and CRM 7905-a, have been issued by the National Metrology Institute of Japan, which is part of the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (NMIJ/AIST), for the determination of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs). The raw materials for the CRMs were an insulation oil (CRM 7902-...

BACKGROUND The aim was to determine the effect of the circumferential resection margin (CRM) on overall survival following surgical excision of rectal cancer. METHODS The effect of CRM on survival was examined by case mix-adjusted analysis of patients undergoing potentially curative excision of a rectal cancer between 1998 and 2002. RESULTS Of 1896 patients, 1561 (82.3 per cent) had recorde...

This paper aims to present the developments performed by the Chemical Metrology Division of the Brazilian NMI – Inmetro, considering the environmental demand. Inmetro addresses great part of its activities to the study of the traceability transference based on production and dissemination of certified reference material (CRM) of different areas in chemistry. So, the achievements made are the gr...

Several authors and consulting firms show statistics indicating that at least 50% of all CRM projects fail. Some of them attempt to point out a list of factors in order to guarantee successful CRM implementation and application. However, few people (either academics or practitioners) attempt to discuss or consider the essence of the idea of CRM. The main goal of this exploratory research is to ...