Integrated Business Research Methods: Airline CRM and Technology

This report presents a research proposal investigating the influence of technology advances on customer relationship management (CRM) within the airline industry, specifically using Australian Airlines as a case study. The study aims to identify the impact of technology on CRM, explore factors influencing customer relationships, and develop technology-based solutions to enhance CRM approaches. The research employs an explanatory research design with primary data collection through a survey questionnaire distributed to employees of Australian Airlines. The report includes a literature review covering electronic CRM, the emergence of technology in CRM, and gaps in existing research. The methodology section details the research design, questions, hypothesis, data collection methods, and sample size. Preliminary results from the survey are presented, along with observations and recommendations. The study highlights the importance of technology in enhancing CRM and suggests areas for future research.

Running head: INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Integrated Business Research Methods
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Acknowledgement
The completion of the assignment certainly enhanced my knowledge in Research Methods
and its use in business studies. I have explored new areas in research methods. In completion
of the assignment, I would like to thank a number of people who have helped me to complete
the assignment. Firstly, I would like to thank my supervisor who have helped me to choose
research methods suitable for the assignment. I thank my peers for helping me to prepare
dummy tables and charts for the calculations. I must thank my friends for encouraging me to
finish the whole work successfully.
Thanking you all,

2INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Executive Summary
Proposed study includes investigation on how technology advances influence customer
relationship management in today’s dynamic market environment in the airline sector.
Purpose of the proposed study is to investigate and identify the impact of technology
advances on customer relationship management. As technology is widely adopted across all
functions in business, it is worth stating that implementation of technology creates crucial
impact on business. In order to derive the outcome of the study, primary research methods in
the study would be used, thereby, research methods have been explained by diving
comprehensive definition and its application. To derive a better insight about the use of
technology in customer relationship management, study has been suggested to analyse the
use of a particularly technology such as AI in customer service.

3INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Table of Content
1.0 Introduction..........................................................................................................................4
1.1 Problem Statement...........................................................................................................4
1. 3 Research Questions.........................................................................................................5
2.0 Literature Review.................................................................................................................5
2.1 Electronic customer relationship management................................................................6
2.2 Emergence of Technology in CRM.................................................................................6
2.3 Gaps in the research.........................................................................................................8
3.0 Methodology........................................................................................................................8
3.1Research design.................................................................................................................8
3.2 Research question.............................................................................................................9
3.3 Research hypothesis.........................................................................................................9
3.4 Data collection tools and techniques................................................................................9
3.5 Sample size.......................................................................................................................9
4.0 Results................................................................................................................................10
5.0 Observation........................................................................................................................16
5.1 Analysis of Results.........................................................................................................16
6. Recommendation..................................................................................................................17
7. Limitations.......................................................................................................................17
8. Future Scope.....................................................................................................................17
References................................................................................................................................19
Bibliography.........................................................................................................................21

4INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Questionnaire.......................................................................................................................22

5INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Topic- Impact of Technology Advances on Customer Relationship Management- A
Case study of Australian Airline
1.0 Introduction
The proposed study is a detailed investigation on how technology advances influence
customer relationship management in today’s changing market environment. It can be
ascertained that businesses irrespective of type industry, size and structure have started
adopting technology across all operative functions. Customer relationship is a significant
aspect of every business, as better CRM leads to increased customer base, sales and profits.
According to Choudhury and Harrigan (2014), when it comes to managing customer
relations, service industry usually comes first to be considered in business studies. Especially,
in the airline industry, quality of customer service determines the success of the business to
greater degree. On the contrary, as technology provides better and faster to solutions to
business problems, airline organizations choose technology over traditional practices of
managing customer relationship. Therefore, it is important to learn how technology advances
are affecting CRM presently in the airline industry. The purpose of the proposed study is to
investigate and identify the impact of technology advances on customer relationship
management.
1.1 Problem Statement
Rapid development in technology and its growing impact on businesses have now
been a significant concern for organizations in the airline sector. Changing consumers’ taste
and preferences is the most possible occurrence that every business in the airline sector have
to deal with. As technology is widely adopted across all functions in business, it is worth
stating that implementation of technology creates crucial impact on business. Thus, it is

6INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
necessary to learn how technology advances creates potential impact on business in the
airline sector.
1. 3 Research Questions
1. What is the impact of technology advances on customer relationship management in
airline organization?
2. How can CRM be enhanced through technology advances in airline?
2.0 Literature Review
Research Objectives
 To identify the effect of technology advances in CRM of airline organization
 To investigate the factors that influencing customer relationship management
 To develop suitable technology based solutions to boost CRM approaches of
Australian Airline
As put forward by Trainor et al., (2014), the fundamental premise based on which
CRM relies on, creates the insight that understanding customers’ needs and experience
remains the key to customer retention, business growth and profitability. Customer
relationship management remains a significant aspect of business strategy. Nguyen and
Waring (2013) defined customer relationship management as a comprehensive strategy that
enables a business it identify, acquire, retain as well as nurture profitable consumers by
developing and maintaining a long-term relationship with consumers. On the contrary,
Rahimi amnd Kozak (2017) claims that customer relationship management can include
relationship marketing and it is mostly elicited as the value and strategies of relationship
marketing with emphasis on customer relationship.

7INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Customer relationship management strategy connects core dimensions of
organizations, strategy, philosophy as well as technology. According to Kolis and Jirinova,
(2013), success of customer relationship management strategy depends on appropriate
balance between three major aspects –such as people, resource and technology.
2.1 Electronic customer relationship management
As put forward by Shafique et al., (2015) electronic customer relationship remains an
approach applied by organization to identify customers potentially profitable. It has also
been identified that business today tend to seek supplementary relationship activities to
enhance the value of their customer relationship by increasing the quality or delivering better
relationship benefits. As put forward by Soltani and Navimipour (2016), customer
relationship management is a significant driver to business success. Moreover,
implementation of technology in CRM always reduces the cost, thereby profit remains high.
Wang and Sparks (2017) mentioned that electronic customer relationship management
includes all sort of management relationship along with the use of Information Technology in
managing customer relationship.
2.2 Emergence of Technology in CRM
Technology remains a fundamental element in CRM strategy because Information
Technology makes significant contribution to business functions. According to Wang (2014)
technology contributes to business overall process by reducing cost and time. For example,
use of AI technology in addressing customers’ general concern about service information.
Due to the use of technology customers receives faster and quality service. According to
Tseng and Wu (2014), technology advances and its use shifted competition from price or core
service to value added services. Consequently, technology accelerated the support to
customer relationship management.

8INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
Information Tools:
According to Choudhury and Harrigan (2014), Information Tools are of great use for
analytical purpose because it stores customer data. For example, data warehouse is a
significant storage; database is known as set of organized and structured data. Furthermore,
the use of internet as well as social network can ease the complexity in managing customer
relationship. As put forward by Trainor et al., (2014), ability of the organization that applies
CRM to figure out customer privacy and preferences throughput the transactions guide
campaigns and techniques. In addition to this, the purpose of using data is about serving and
not only about having technological application. Hence, the use of customer data significantly
related to strategic decision-making.
Data Mining:
It has been identified that data mining is kind of a technique which is used for
analysing the information particularly in a data base with the use of tools that tend to look for
trends without appropriate knowledge about the meaning of data. It is significantly an
effective data particularly used in CRM strategies and electronic communication. Rahimi and
Kozak (2017) mentioned that data mining remains as the process of extracting as well as
crossing significant information where consumer behaviour can be mapped. On the contrary,
Kolis and Jirinova (2013) mentioned that Data warehouse mining is more of a technique
which is used for extracting information as well as presenting new knowledge which is not
previously identified or selected from the database and this significant aims at gaining
relevant information which are necessary for business. It is observed that data mining is
considered when implementing appropriate approaches to CRM. Conversely, Soltani and
Navimipour (2016) mentioned that technology based CRM enables businesses to collect and

9INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
use information to generate better insight about customers and there is a direct relationship
between data processes as well as analysis.
Sales Force Automation
As put forward by Choudhury and Harrigan (2014), Sales automation stands for
software to automate the sales force with the inclusion of process regarding contact
management, forecasting sales and groups sales. The major operational focus on CRM
remains as technological platform that support customer interactions as well as automation.
As put forward by Nguyen and Waring (2013), CRM software deliverers are planted in SFA
and therefore, it can be easily understandable that CRM is developed and designed to
enhance sale as well as level of business functions.
2.3 Gaps in the research
Even though existing research papers provide a detailed overview of how technology
facilitates the process of customer relationship management. However, studies have
overlooked the use of technologies that are particularly used in the airline services. Airline
organizations today are widely depend upon technology to manage their customer
relationship. Existing research papers fundamentally discussed the benefits of using
technology in CRM but hardly a study has discussed the adoption of technology in relation to
CRM and its ongoing impact on the service quality of airline organizations.
3.0 Methodology
3.1Research design
This research has chosen a single research design where an explanatory research
design has been chosen. Explanatory design can also be named as causal research design and
as the name suggests explanatory research is used for measuring the causal relationship

10INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
between the variables (Edmonds & Kennedy, 2016). It also helps in testing the hypothesis
chosen in the research and confirms the theories described in the literature review section.
3.2 Research question
1. What is the impact of technology advances on customer relationship management in
airline organization?
2. How can CRM be enhanced through technology advances in airline?
3.3 Research hypothesis
H0: There is no significant impact of technology on customer relationship management in
airline organisation
H1: There is significant impact of technology on customer relationship management in airline
organisation
3.4 Data collection tools and techniques
This research has used primary data collection method to collect quantitative data
from employees working in Australian Airlines. The research has developed a close ended
survey questionnaire as the instrument for data collection. The questionnaire consists of 20
questions where nominal, ordinal, ratio and interval scale has been used (Torous et al., 2016).
Nominal scale and ordinal scale has been used to develop demographic questions whereas
ratio scale has been used to develop questions on technological advancement and customer
relationship management. The research has used five point Likert scale to develop these
questions where the range varies from strongly agree to strongly disagree.
3.5 Sample size
Sampling has been performed to choose sample populace from the target population.
The target population included the employees working in Australian airlines and the sampling
frame included the employees working in Sydney Airport. The sample size has been chosen

11INTEGRATED BUSINESS RESEARCH METHODS
by considering the overall employee population in Australian Airline along with the sampling
error and confidence interval. The research has kept in mind the sampling error of 15% and
confidence interval of 95% to choose 50 respondents for the study (Chaudhuri, 2016). In this
research, the study has used simple random sampling as the method for choosing the sample
population. In this research, randomisation is the basis for choosing sample population so that
all respondents have equal opportunity of being selected.
4.0 Results
Descriptive Statistics
N Minim
um
Maxim
um
Mean Std.
Deviati
on
Skewness Kurtosis
Statis
tic
Statisti
c
Statisti
c
Statis
tic
Std
.
Err
or
Statisti
c
Statis
tic
Std
.
Err
or
Statis
tic
Std
.
Err
or
How far
do you
agree that
technology
facilitates
operational
functions of
Australian
Airline?
50 1 5 2.28 .21
6
1.526 .832 .33
7
-.877 .66
2
How far do
you agree
that social
media has
a crucial
role in
managing
customer
relation?
50 1 5 2.64 .23
2
1.638 .350 .33
7
-
1.556
.66
2
Does
your
organizatio
n provide
50 1 5 2.32 .21
7
1.531 .853 .33
7
-.841 .66
2