AN EXPLORATORY STUDY ON CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT ON E-MARKETS (Auctioning Vs. Negotiations)

e-Markets have emerged as one of the topmost world economy drivers today; thereby causing a revolution in the e-Commerce industry. It is a form of business where goods are sold directly to customers (Business-to-Customer - B2C). The major players in this sporadic drive are most assuredly the Customers because if e-markets are not patronized, there will be no revolution. Over the years, the effort towards Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has influenced the development and incorporation of several Service Oriented Architectures (SOA) towards improving e-markets. However, do these SOAs satisfy the direct needs of the Customers? It has been highlighted in the literature that e- Markets face various challenges especially in CRM. The objective of this study is to investigate and explore these challenges of e-Market systems with respect to CRM from customers’ perspectives in order to gain a deeper understanding of the related issues and to reveal potential gaps between research and practice in CRM. We present an exploratory study of the challenges and issues in CRM as discovered in e-Markets. The data were collected by conducting a survey with customers who have substantial experience with services on offer on the e-Markets and interviews with a few stakeholders in the e-Commerce industry. The author’s findings reveal that a closer attention to the yearnings of the drivers (Customers) in terms of qualitative CRM is needed for a major boost in the e-Commerce sector. Some advances in the technical direction has been made, but the human related issues in CRM have not been addressed adequately.