Customer Relationship Management (CRM) has become a topic of interest, especially with the onset of e-commerce. As CRM is a term that is used in a broad sense, a marketing practitioner needs to understand what CRM is, in terms of its applicability to the organisation, its impact and its benefits to customers.

CRM as a concept is as old as marketing itself. Firms in both consumer and business-to-business marketing have always (either by accident or by intent) made attempts to encourage repeat buying from consumers. In todays context, what has been added to this kind of CRM is the collaborative and co-operative aspect from the consumers end.

This kind of collaborative effort could assume either a complex form in business-to-business marketing (with
different buying influences) or it could just involve the consumer using a credit card sharing his personal (demographic and psychographic) information with the marketer.