Influence of Customer Relationship Management Dimensions on Performance of Classified Accommodation Facilities in Kenya

Abstract

Although implementation of CRM has the potential to improve organizational performance, this is not well established in the hospitality industry in Kenya where the performance in the sector is requires key attention. There are a limited number of research studies on the relationship between CRM dimensions and hospitality facilities performance. The general objective of this study was to investigate the relationship among CRM dimensions, and performance of classified accommodation facilities in the Coast region of Kenya. The specific objectives of the study were as to determine the relationship between Customer Oriented (CO) and the performance of classified accommodation facilities in Coast region of Kenya, and to determine the relationship between Knowledge Management (KM) and the performance of classified accommodation facilities in Coast region of Kenya. The study was anchored on Resourced Based View and the Knowledge Based View. The target population of the study comprised of 36 classified accommodation facilities while a sample of 33 establishments was used. This study utilized a descriptive research design and quantitative analysis approach. The study employed questionnaires as a survey instrument. Descriptive statistics were used to check the central tendency and the dispersion of how respondents reacted to the items in the questionnaire while correlation analysis was conducted to establish the relationship between the independent and dependent variables. Visual presentations such as frequency tables, frequency distributions, scatter plots; correlation matrices were used to summarize the data. The findings of the study were as follows: Customer Orientation (r=.547, p<.001; β=0.72, p<.001) and Knowledge Management (r=.554, p<.001; β=0.662, p<.001). Thus both Customer Orientation and Knowledge Management have a significant and positively linear relationship with performance of the classified accommodation facilities in Coast region of Kenya. The study thus concludes that performance of the classified accommodation facilities in Coast region of Kenya is highly pre-determined by the CRM dimensions namely; CO and KM. The study recommends that management should ensure that the organizations have adopted CO and KM strategies so as improve performance.