Assessment of the Critical Success Factors (CSF) of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in Manufacturing Sector of Iranian Sports Industry

At the beginning of the third millennium, sports world experienced a new era and the fast and wide developments in all of its aspects has called attention to the use of marketing techniques in sports industry. Being a descriptive-analytical field study, the present research aims to compare the critical success factors of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) in the geographical borderlines of Iran. Data were collected using Moghimi’s (2008) CRM assessment questionnaire which was developed using Likert scale. The questionnaire’s validity was analyzed and verified through a survey from university faculty members and CRM and sports management experts. In addition, its reliability was calculated by Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (? = 0.89). The population of the study consisted of the sports manufacturing companies in Iran (N = 220), 140 of which comprised the research sample. Hypothesis testing was done using the Repeated Measures Analysis of Variance (rANOVA). Data analysis showed that, among the critical success factors of CRM, customer contact management, customer service and sales automation had the widest applications; on the other hand, the information system integration and creation of CRM team and committees had the most limited applications. Overall, it can be concluded that the application of the Critical Success Factors (CSF) of CRM is very limited and poor in the manufacturing sector of the Iranian sports industry.