Do the customer relationship benefits influence expectation of continuity? Adoption of social customer relationship management to promote eco‐friendly products

• Published date: 01 December 2022
• Author: Dokun Oluwajana,Ibrahim Adeshola,Gbolahan Olowu
• Date: 01 December 2022
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2701

RESEARCH ARTICLE

Do the customer relationship benefits influence expectation

of continuity? Adoption of social customer relationship

management to promote eco-friendly products

Dokun Oluwajana

1

| Ibrahim Adeshola

2

| Gbolahan Olowu

3

1

Department of Management Information

Systems, Cyprus International University,

Nicosia, North Cyprus

2

Department of Information Technology,

Eastern Mediterranean University, Famagusta,

North Cyprus

3

Department of Business Administration,

Cyprus International University, Nicosia, North

Cyprus

Correspondence

Dokun Oluwajana, Department of

Management Information Systems, Cyprus

International University, Nicosia, North

Cyprus.

Email: dklewa@gmail.com

Social media and customer relationships have become ubiquitous, and every organi-

zation now depends on both to manage and meet their organizational targets. Most

organizations are now finding it necessary to adopt Social Customer Relationship

Management (SCRM) to improve their marketing strategies and facilitate customer

expectation of continuity. In essence, there has been a public interest in using SCRM

on eco-friendly brands, and these have become inevitable for the new generation of

sustainable marketing organizations. This study investigates the effectiveness of

SCRM benefits and examines the relationships among customer commitment, cus-

tomer trust, customer relationship satisfaction, customer relationship quality, and

expectation of continuity. The results revealed that relationship benefits positively

influence commitment, trust, satisfaction, and relationship quality; likewise, they

influence customer expectation of continuity, except trust, which is not significant.

The study provides recommendations for managers to maximize the advantages of

the relationship to the expectation of continuity.

KEYWORDS

an expectation of continuity, customer engagement, customer quality, customer relationship,

eco-friendly brand, social media

1|INTRODUCTION

The world's ecological system is declining and without significant

intervention by world powers and environmentalists. We, the inhabi-

tants, are in a dangerous position of global threat and market forces.

Due to the high demand for eco-friendly products in emerging mar-

kets, many opportunities now arise to expand the eco-friendly busi-

ness in different dimensions (Barbarossa & De Pelsmacker, 2016;

Hassan & Valenzuela, 2016). In the past, eco-friendly brands could

rely on a holistic approach and a synergetic approach to secure regular

customers. Recently, green customers' ascension has made the eco-

friendly business model accepted in the competitive environment as a

signal of change in the market proliferation (Grubor &

Milovanov, 2017). However, the critical element to new generation

eco-friendly businesses is to provide sustainable added-value services

to every customer in every way possible. Establishing customer assets

through effective communication with consumers also shifts their

product marketing paradigm toward social media to facilitate a seller-

customer relationship. It is not a new technological innovation that

Social Media (SM) is the new way individuals can communicate, share,

create, and manage content (Grégoire, Salle & Trippe, 2015). How-

ever, SM has become the most influential management and marketing

tool that has shifted from passive consumers to dynamic customer

engagement (Dana et al., 2013). With the increasing prevalence of

SM, different smart applications such as phones and tablets make

spending superfluous energy and time on SM (Gandomi & Haider,

2015; Scott, 2015). Even expected to continue for years to come,

which makes many companies react positively to these high-tech and

sociological changes through budget reallocation from mass/broad-

cast media methods to secretly online platforms. However, it makes

companies initiated the deployment of SM in many sectors of their

marketing areas to improve their customer relationships, build

Received: 2 July 2020 Revised: 2 March 2021 Accepted: 13 May 2021

DOI: 10.1002/pa.2701

J Public Affairs. 2022;22(Suppl. 1):e2701. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/pa © 2021 John Wiley & Sons Ltd. 1of12

https://doi.org/10.1002/pa.2701