Adapting TOE Model to Investigate Factors Influencing SaaS-based CRM Adoption

SaaS-based CRM has been thriving over the past few years. However, due to its rapid development, very few studies have been conducted to explore the factors that influence the adoption of SaaS-based CRM. Most of the previous studies have been concentrating on either the adoption of CRM or the adoption of SaaS, separately, instead of regarding them as a whole. This study, using a dataset consisting of 398 observations provided by a SaaS-based CRM vendor, examines the factors which have statistically significant relationships with the SaaS-based CRM adoption under the TOE model through leveraging a series of Chi-square tests. The results indicate that Technology Competence, Company Size, Request for Tender, Customer’s Attitude, and Partnership with Vendor have statistically significant relationships with the adoption of SaaS-based CRM, whereas Top Management Support, Budget Allocation, Request for Information, Request for Proposal do not show any statistical significance. Theoretically, this study fills up the gap of very limited research studies on the SaaS-based CRM system adoption. Meanwhile, by adding customer-centric related factors into the original constructs of the TOE model, the importance of the concept of “customer-centric” in the adoption is stressed. SaaS-based CRM vendors can benefit from this study since they could increase the product's adoption rate by implementing better customer segmentation to make the business more efficient and more profitable. The major limitation of this study is the research methods are restricted by the data type. Continuous data could be involved in the future study so that more fruitful research outcomes could be obtained.