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The Impact of Social CRM on Customer Loyalty of Islamic banks in Kuwait:

Customer Empowerment as a mediating Variable

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GIS Business
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The Impact of Social Customer Relationship Management on Customer

Loyalty of Islamic banks in Kuwait: Customer Empowerment as a
mediating Variable
Faraj Mazyed Faraj Aldaihani
Researcher, department of marketing, faculty of economics and management,
university Putra Malaysia
43400 UPM Serdang
f.airforc@hotmail.com
0096599147997

Noor Azman Bin Ali

Associate professor, department of management and marketing, faculty of
economics and management, university Putra Malaysia
43400 UPM Serdang
nazmn@upm.edu.my
006038946618
Haslinda Binti Hashim
Associate professor, department of management and marketing, faculty of
economics and management, university Putra Malaysia
43400 UPM Serdang
Norazlyn Kamal Basha
Associate professor, department of management and marketing, faculty of
economics and management, university Putra Malaysia
43400 UPM Serdang

Abstract: The aim of this study was to clarify the impact of social customer relationship management on
customer loyalty through customer empowerment. Data were collected on the basis of a structured question
developed based on the literature and distributed to a sample of social media users comprised 412 respondents.
Participation inclusion was depends on two criteria, which were using social media applications more than once
a week and following at least one brand. Four hypotheses were proposed to achieve the study objective. Social
customer relationship management was presumed to have a significant impact on both customer empowerment
and loyalty. Customer empowerment was postulated to impact customer loyalty and therefore to play a
significant mediating role in the impact of social customer relationship management on customer loyalty.
Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis as well as structural equation modeling was conducted using IBM
SPSS 24 and AMOS 22. The results pointed out that all hypotheses were supported. That is, social customer
relationship management exerted a significant direct and indirect effects on customer loyalty, i.e., customer
empowerment significantly mediated the impact of social customer relationship management on customer
loyalty. the contribution of this study to the body of consumer behavior literature is that it filled a gap in
Research conducted to investigate such relationships. Considering these findings, the study recommended that
banks should take customer empowerment into their consideration and understand switching barriers that keep
customer from switching to competitors in addition to rewarding customer on an ongoing base. Furthermore,
researchers were called to conduct longitudinal studies to investigate the same effects since the current study
was cross-sectional one.
Keywods: Social customer relationship management, customer empowerment, customer loyalty, banking
industry

1. Introduction
Organizations must change their ways in dealing with customers due to the changing
nature of customers behavior in response to changes happened in the surround environment

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such as technological changes presented by the introduction of new methods such as social
media applications. Kim and Ko (2012) argued that companies should focus on several
aspects in order to face market challenges, the most important of which is to focus on product
quality and to build relationships with customers. Organizations are already use customer
relationship management system. According to Trainor et al. (2014), the use of customer
relationship management alone is not enough to achieve the desired goal of delivering value
for the company and customers at the same time, so companies have to support customer
relationship management systems with other resources such as social media. Erdogmus and
Cicek (2012) distinguished between marketing using social media and marketing by
traditional ways. The goal of marketing through social media is to establish relationships and
links with customers compared to the traditional ways, which are related to selling products
of the company. They indicated that the use of social media is more important than the
traditional ways in marketing due to the fact that customers are busy and accessibility to them
via Facebook and Twitter at any time is easier. Despite the high prevalence of social media
applications, the effectiveness of implementing customer relationship management via social
media is still unclear (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010).Bull's (2003) indicated that firms may fail to
achieve the objectives envisaged by social customer relationship management. On the other
hand, Trainor et al. (2014) revealed that social customer relationship management is
positively associated to customer loyalty. Heller-Baird and Parasnis (2011) indicated social
customer relationship management is related to customer empowerment, hence, companies
are required to adopt it in order to meet customers’ needs, which in turn positively affects
customers loyalty (Fuchs and Schreier, 2011).Based on these arguments, this study seeks to
explore the impact of social customer relationship management on customer loyalty through
customer empowerment. One of the most important reasons for conducting this study is to
verify the role played by social customer relationship management in improving relationships
with customers and providing them with the intended value as well as to improve the value
requires by the company.
2. Literature review and hypotheses development
2.1 Social CRM
Customer behavior is constantly changing and therefore the tools or techniques used to
manage customer relationships must change. As consumers use social media, companies need
to revisit traditional ways of managing customer relationships and switching to new methods
such as social media (Aldaihani et al., 2020; Aldaihani& Ali, 2018; Nguyen and Mutum,
2012). The integration of CRM systems with social media has led to the emergence of a new
term called social CRM (Trainor et al., 2014), henceforth SCRM. It is understood that SCRM
consists of two parts: CRM and social media. CRM has been defined as a company practice
of a specific marketing method based on continuous revision of information about existing
and potential customers (Peppard, 2000).On the other hand, social media has been defined as
applications designed to facilitate interaction, collaboration and content sharing, and include
several types, such as social blogs (Kim and Ko, 2012). Another definition of social media by
Xiang and Gretzel (2010) regarded it as web-based applications that carry information
content and individual impressions that are shared with others. Trainor et al. (2014) defined
SCRM as the integration of traditional activities used to communicate with customers in
ways of social media in order to ensure customers participation in active conversations and to
improve relationships with them. Perhaps the most important reasons why companies adopt
CRM by social media are that social media applications achieve the advantage of real-time
interaction with customers, and that using social media does not cost the company. It is also
suitable for companies with different sizes. Finally, social media are widely distributed
among the majority of customers (Harrigan and Miles, 2014). In a study conducted by Askool
and Nakata (2011) on factors of SCRM adoption in banking sector in Saudi Arabia, the

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authors proposed model of SCRM consisted of information sharing, familiarity, caring

behavior in addition to Web 2.0 features. Harrigan and Miles (2014) suggested seven factors
of SCRM: online communities, social media support to CRM system, customer information
capture, customer information use, customer relationship orientation, social media data about
customers, interactions and competitors, and customer communication in terms of
communication ways and maintenance.
2.2 Customer empowerment
Customer empowerment has received a considerable attention in the literature, based on
the premise that the areas in which customers are empowered (e.g., service recovery) is
actually result in positive outcomes such as customer trust and customer loyalty (Aldaihani,
& Ali, 2018; Pranic and Roehl, 2012; Wright et al., 2006). Customer empowerment has been
defined as strategies or mechanisms used by a company to equip its customers with sufficient
knowledge and independence in making decisions (Camacho et al., 2014), therefore, it was
recognized as transforming control over decisions and choices to customers (Pranic and
Roehl, 2012).
Stated generally, customer empowerment can be divided into two types, which are
informational empowerment and decisional empowerment. The first type refers to
information sharing between customers and their advising experts, while the second one
describes a situation in which customers are given the opportunity to participate in decision-
making process (Islam et al., 2018; Camacho et al., 2014).
In terms of customer empowerment strategies, Acar and Puntoni (2016) indicated that
customers are empowered in order to meet one or more of the following strategies: creation,
selection, and engagement. The first strategy signifies appreciating customers’ suggestions
about related issues like new product development, while the second strategy is concerned
with customer selection of some options like product marketing. Finally, customer
engagement as an ultimate aim of customer empowerment is categorized into board
engagement with a focus on increasing the number of customers involved in the brand, and
deep engagement intended to increase customer involvement in some themes like content
creation (Acar and Puntoni, 2016).
According to Anshari et al. (2013), ensuring a successful implementation of such strategies is
a function of a personal process in which the power is created by the customer him or herself,
or an interactive process in which the power is transferred from one party (i.e. the company)
to another (i.e. the customer). One pivotal mean recommended by authors to apply personal
or interactive strategies in the context of CRM is social media, which together constitute what
is known as SCRM (Anshari et al., 2015). Empowering customers using of social media has
led to the emergence of a new class of customers who are social customers (Saarijärvi et al.,
2013; Almunawar et al., 2015) who were regarded as co-creators of values (Constantinides,
2009). A significant impact of SCRM is that it engenders customer loyalty (Mosadegh and
Behboudi, 2011).
2.3 Customer loyalty
Purchase repetition is one synonym of customer loyalty, hence, the concept of customer
loyalty is usually used to measure customers' tendency to reuse the same goods and services
they have used in advance (Al-Hawary, 2013; Al-Hawary& Harahsheh, 2014; Choi and Kim,
2004). Even though the concept has been defined as a deep commitment of a customer to
repurchase or prefer products and services provided by the company (Al-Hawary& Hussien,
2017; Alshurideh et al., 2017). There are two key types of customer loyalty, which are long-
term and short-term loyalty. Customers with long-term loyalty are hardly to shift to other
companies in the future, but customers who have short-term loyalty are likely to shift (Liu et
al., 2011). In the context of social media, customer loyalty appears in recommending others

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through social media to interact with the company and using its products, increasing shopping
through social media, following up the activities on social media (Aldaihani & Ali, 2018; Wu
and Li, 2018).
Consequently, customer loyalty can be measured using customer repurchase intention,
refusing switch to other better companies or products, and the desire to recommend the
company’s products (Aldaihani & Ali, 2019; Lee et al., 2001; Aydin and Özer, 2005). In the
same vein, Uncleset al. (2003) provided three conceptualizations of customer loyalty: loyalty
as an attitude (attitudinal commitment), loyalty as a behavior (repeated purchase) and loyalty
as attitude as well as behavior moderated by contingency variables (i.e., customer or purchase
situation). Other researchers (e.g., Greenberg, 2010) identified two types of customer loyalty:
behavioral and attitudinal loyalty and indicated that the loyalty of social customer is
attitudinal. In agreement with this, in a study by Prasertchuwong (2018), customer loyalty
was found to be a function of relationship quality. Wang et al. (2017) measured customer
loyalty through three factors: recommending the service provider to others, repeat selection
of the service provider in the future, and word-of-mouth. It was noted from the previous
studies that customer loyalty describes a positive behavior of the customer towards the
company that expressed through repurchase intention, advise others to buy its products or
services, and to stay as a customer of the company and not switch to other companies,
although these companies offer better .
2.4 Social CRM and customer loyalty
Companies of all kinds have begun to adopt social media applications in order to
improve their relationships with their customers (Xiang and Gretzel, 2010). However, an
important question that the current study seeks to answer is whether there is a significant
impact of SCRM on customer loyalty? The answer of such a question can be found after
reviewing the findings of previous studies. Trainor et al. (2014) confirmed that SCRM
capabilities of a company have a positive impact on customers’ satisfaction and loyalty. An
explanation of this impact is that SCRM meets customer needs (Nure, 2018), providing
customers with a value better that the value provided by competitors, and establishing good
relationships with customers (Yerpude and Singhal, 2018; Ghafari et al., 2011).
It was assumed that these pillars of SCRM would improve customer loyalty. He et al.’s
(2013) study is one of the studies that confirmed this interpretation, as it showed that many
companies are managing their relationships with their customers by employing social media
in order to improve customer satisfaction, increase their loyalty, build excellent
organizational reputation and increase revenues. Thus, companies achieve two goals
simultaneously when using the same strategy in SCRM.
In addition to that, Agnihotri et al. (2012) showed that using social media applications such as
Facebook and Twitter by companies to manage their customer relationships improve these
relationships. Despite these findings on the effect between these two variables, the important
question is whether these results can be circulated to banks in one of the Arab countries. The
answer to this question is certainly no, depending on the different context and places of
conducting those studies, in addition to differences between participants in previous studies
and participants in the current study, as well as differences in methods used by banks
participated in the current study to manage customers relationships from methods used by
other banks. In order to investigate the impact of SCRM on customer loyalty in banking
settings, the following hypothesis was suggested:
H1: SCRM has a statistically significant impact on customer loyalty.
2.5 Social CRM and customer empowerment
In the context of the relationship between CRM and customer empowerment, it was
noted that the focus on the social aspect of CRM is related to a concept that emerged in

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conjunction with social media applications, which is the social customer (Trainor et al.,
2014). This means that building relationships with social customers must take into account an
important aspect of communication, which is social media. Customer empowerment is
important when talking about SCRM because this kind of social management is based on
using information created and shared among online customers (Mangold and Faulds, 2009).
Since the objective of CRM is to continuously refine customer information (Al-Hawary &
Aldaihani, 2016; Peppard, 2000), adopting customer empowerment strategy through social
media enables the company to obtain feedback from its customers and to achieve the intended
goals of CRM. This means that CRM system should enhance customer empowerment. One
can find similar view of point in Bull’s (2003) study who described the goal of CRM as to get
information from customers and using it to meet their needs. This makes it possible to
achieve such a goal by empowering customers. Heller-Baird and Parasnis (2011)
recommended that companies should be aware of the differences between social media and
other communication channels because SCRM is about enabling customers to achieve a
common benefit for the customer and the company at the same time. On the other hand, the
authors stressed the need for companies to think in the someway customers think. The
company will achieve this only through interaction with its customers through social media
and managing their relationships using its means. Pires et al. (2006) believe that enabling
customers through social networks allows customers to share information and make
suggestions about the value they desire. Almunawar and Anshari (2014) indicated that
customers value their empowerment by organizations and this is expected to improve
customer satisfaction and loyalty. In order to identify the impact of social customer
relationship management on customer's empowerment using a sample of bank customers, the
following hypothesis was proposed:
H2: SCRM has a statistically significant impact on customer empowerment.
2.6 Customer empowerment and customer loyalty
Customer empowerment as a construct related to giving the customer the opportunity to
participate and submit his or her own suggestions results in customer loyalty enhancement.
Rishika et al. (2013) found that customer participation in social media means of a company
leads to an increased degree of frequent visits to that company. For the authors, the
relationship between customer empowerment and customer loyalty is a positive relationship.
A study by Choi and Kim (2004) revealed an indirect effect of social interaction by social
media on customer loyalty. Furthermore, Bhat and Darzi (2016) conclude that there is a
significant impact of customer empowerment on customer loyalty. Fuchs and Schreier (2011)
signified that customer empowerment is essential factor in customer behavioral intention
improvement. Therefore, an indirect influence can be identified between customer
empowerment and loyalty. O'Cass and Viet Ngo (2011) showed that delegating customers
plays a significant role in improving their satisfaction. Customer satisfaction may be regarded
as a determinant of customer loyalty (Aldaihani & Ali, 2018; Al-Hawary et al. 2017;
Alolayyan et al. 2018; Al-Hawary et al. 2011; ). Grissemann and Stokburger-Sauer (2012)
added that customer co-creation initiative implemented by companies positively affects
customer loyalty. Basically, a set of reasons were emerged to support the positive impact of
customer empowerment on customer loyalty. First, customer empowerment strategies with
the aim of empowerment to design (suggesting new product ideas) and empowerment to
select (choice of products to be marketed) lead to better customer behaviors such as
commitment to the company, promotion of company's products to others, and customer
loyalty (Fuchs and Schreier, 2011). Second, customer empowerment puts the customer in the
center of business transaction; therefore, the customer is seen as a strategic agent helps the
company to explain the behaviors of frequent purchase, commitment and loyalty. The
positive interaction between the company and the customer is a reason to improve the

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customer's experience and loyalty and to enhance the profitability of the company (Niininen
et al., 2007). Third, customer empowerment leads to better outcomes because that
empowerment meets the desire of customers need for independence and self-esteem. In order
to verify these results using a sample of customers in the banking sector, the following
assumption was made:
H3: Customer empowerment has a statistically significant impact on customer loyalty.
2.7 Social CRM and customer loyalty through customer empowerment
Customer empowerment is a process since it requires the application of mechanisms
that allow individuals to have the power to control issues of concern to them and to make
decisions. As an outcome, customer empowerment means that the individual becomes
effective and exercises the authority to exercise control (Pires et al., 2006). Customer
empowerment is an important element in the relationship between SCRM and customer
loyalty because the essence of customer empowerment is the information that the customer
has. Faase et al. (2011) believe that the aim of CRM is to obtain, analyze and use information
in order to achieve more sales and meet the needs of customers. Hence, it is clear that there is
an interaction between SCRM and customer empowerment on the one hand in terms of
improving the performance of the company, and between customer empowerment and his or
her loyalty, on the other hand, by meeting their needs. As the current study seeks to identify
the mediating role of customer empowerment in the relationship between SCRM and
customer loyalty, customer empowerment has been treated in the current study as a process.
Dutot (2013) described SCRM as CRM 2.0 and indicated that this term is built on customer
empowerment. In the financial service industry, customer empowerment can be understood
through education. According to Bell and Eisingerich (2007), customer education means
helping customers reach the best level to benefit from the products they receive as well as
helping them solve the problems they face. Customer education also includes skills and
abilities that enable customers to take advantage of the information and employ it properly.
Looking at customer empowerment by supporting customer participation in the SCRM
system, Hennig-Thurau et al. (2013) explained that the active participation of customers
through social media is an important element that contributes to the formation of consumer
behavior. This means that this participation has an impact on customer loyalty. The results of
Long et al. (2013) confirmed that relationship development as a key factor of customer
relationship management has a significant impact on customer loyalty. In order to investigate
the impact of SCRM on customer loyalty through customer empowerment using a sample of
participants in this study, the following hypothesis was suggested:
H4: Customer empowerment mediates the impact of SCRM on customer loyalty
3. Methodology
3.1 Population, sample and data collection
Data were collected using a structured questionnaire distributed to a sample of social
media users. Following Erdogmus and Cicek (2012), two questions were asked to the users of
the social media before identifying the participants in the study. Question 1: Do you use
social media more than once a week? Question 2: Do you follow at least one brand when you
use social media? If the answer to the first and second questions is (yes), the user fills the
questionnaire. The convenience sample of the current study consisted of 412 participants. The
majority of participants in the study were male with 73% versus 13% of females and the
average age of participants was 30 years.
3.2 Exploratory factor analysis (EFA)
A pool of items were collected from previous studies conducted on SCRM (Greenberg,
2010; Harrigan and Miles, 2014), customer empowerment (Acar and Puntoni, 2016) and
customer loyalty (Aydin and Özer, 2005; Bell and Eisingerich, 2007; Liu et al., 2011) in
order to develop the questionnaire that can be utilized to gather data from study subjects. In

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the first step, 20 items were adopted to measure SCRM, 9 items for customer empowerment
and 6 items for customer loyalty. Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) and Bartlett’s test for
Sphericity were used to ensure data suitability for factor analysis (Harrigan and Miles, 2014).
The results indicated that data used in this study is valid to conduct the analysis (KMO =
0.696, P-vale of Bartlett’s Sphericity< 0.01). In the second step, EFA by dimension reduction
in IBM SPSS 24 was conducted in order to determine factors that can be used to measure
each variable. Deletion criterion used to delete unsuitable items was cross-loading on other
factors. A cross-loading value should be greater than 0.4 (Belland Eisingerich, 2007). The
results of EFA illustrated in Table 1 showed that social CRM can be measured by 9 items
related to CRM (5 items) and social media (4 items). Five items out of 9 items were loaded
on one factor to measure customer empowerment. With respect to customer loyalty, it was
shown that 3 items were revealed as indicators of customer loyalty. Factor loadings of SCRM
items were ranged from 0.724 to 0.921 while factor loadings for customer empowerment
were between 0.722 and 0.800. Moreover, factor loadings of customer loyalty were from
0.871 to 0.901. That is all values of constructs factor loadings were greater than 0.70 (Wu and
Li, 2018).
Table 1. Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis
Descriptive Statistics Cumulative % of
Factor
Components Items Std. Variance
Mean Loadings
Deviation Explained
SCRM1 3.35 0.63 0.921
SCRM2 3.33 0.74 0.901
SCRM3 3.23 0.69 0.875
SCRM4 3.58 0.75 0.844
SCRM SCRM5 3.39 0.81 0.841 21.10
SCRM6 3.53 0.64 0.787
SCRM7 3.62 0.56 0.760
SCRM8 3.42 0.70 0.759
SCRM9 3.21 0.89 0.724
CSEM1 3.28 0.95 0.800
CSEM2 3.41 0.74 0.779
Customer
CSEM3 3.32 0.78 0.760 30.06
Empowerment
CSEM4 3.25 0.55 0.745
CSEM5 3.28 0.81 0.722
CSLO1 3.41 0.87 0.901
Customer
CSLO2 3.39 0.55 0.881 23.09
Loyalty
CSLO3 3.63 0.68 0.871
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sampling adequacy = 0.696, Approx. Chi-Square = 583.77, df
= 409, Sig. = 0.000. Extraction method: principal component analysis based on Eigenvalue
greater than 1 (3 components extracted). Rotation method: Varimax with Kaiser Normalization.
Small coefficients were suppressed by absolute value = 0.4.Rotation converged in 5 iterations.
Means range: 3.21 – 3.63.Cumulative % of total variance explained = 74.25%.
4. Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
Fornell and Larcker (1981: 45) argued, “Before testing for a significant relationship in
the structural model, one must demonstrate that the measurement model has a satisfactory
level of validity and reliability”. According to Yoon and Uysal (2005) and Liu et al. (2011),
CFA can be used to evaluate the measurement model in terms of relationships between latent
variables and their related indicators. CFA was conducted in this study based on components
extracted by EFA. Following Wu and Li (2018), the feasibility of the measurement, as shown
in Figure 1, was evaluated by reliability and validity tests. Reliability was rated by composite
reliability and Cronbach’s alpha coefficient (α) while validity was estimated using convergent

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and discriminant validity. Convergent validity was measured by the average variance
extracted (AVE) and discriminant validity was appraised by a comparison between the square
root of AVE and correlation coefficients among study variables. Results of reliability and
validity are shown in Table 2.

Figure 1. Measurement model

Table 2. Results of reliability, validity and correlations
Reliability Validity Correlation Coefficients
Variables CR α AVE √AVE SCRM CSEM CSLO
SCRM 0.939 0.84 0.634 0.796 -
CSEM 0.883 0.79 0.602 0.775 0.66 -
CSLO 0.866 0.88 0.684 0.827 0.73 0.59 -
Table 2 displays the results of reliability and validity. According to the results, all Cronbach’s
coefficients were ranged from 0.79-0.88. Harrigan and Miles (2014) confirmed that a scale is
reliable if Cronbach’s alpha values were above 0.70. In order to calculate composite
reliability (CR), factor loadings extracted for indicators in Figure 1 were used to compute
AVE, on which CR can be estimated. The results in Table 2 showed that CRs were ranged
from 0.883 to 0.939 which indicated values greater than 0.70 (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). In
terms of convergent validity, AVE values ranged 0.602-0.684 emphasized that the condition
of convergent validity was met since all AVEs were greater than 0.5 and exceeded the shared
variance between dimensions of each construct (Cronin Jr et al., 2000). Liu et al.’s (2011)
clarified that AVE values that exceed 0.5 indicate that a percentage of greater than 50% of
construct variance is due to the indicators of that construct. Because of discriminant validity,
a comparison must be made between the square root of AVE and correlation coefficients
among study variables. As can be observed for the results in Table 2, all square roots of AVE
were above correlations between variables, which presented an acceptable degree of
discriminant validity (Wu and Li, 2018) .The, final step in measurement model evaluation
was goodness of fit indices. Six fit indices were selected to be reported in Table 3, which

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were Chi-square/df ratio, goodness-of-fit index (GFI), the adjusted goodness-of-fit index
(AGFI), comparative fit index (CFI), root mean square residual (RMR) and root mean square
error of approximation (RMSEA). These indices were selected in order to estimate the
measurement model fit in comparison to null model (Hooper et al., 2008). The results
established an acceptable values of all fit indices (χ2/df = 1.88, GFI = 0.921, AGFI = 0.910,
CFI = 0.924, RMR = 0.05, RMSEA = 0.04).
Table 3. Results of goodness of fit indices
Indices Chi2/df GFI AGFI CFI RMR RMSEA
Values 1.88 0.921 0.910 0.924 0.05 0.04
Criteria < 3.00 > 0. 90 > 0. 90 > 0. 90 <0.08 <0.07
4.1 Structural model
The hypotheses presumed in this study were tested via structural equation modeling
(SEM). According to Aydin and Özer (2005), researchers use SEM technique to concurrently
estimate multiple regression equations. The results of structural model can be seen in Figure
2. The model consists of one independent variable (SCRM), one dependent variable (CSLO)
and one mediating variable (CSEM). Guided by Preacher and Hayes (2008), testing the
presumed effect of SCRM on CSLO through CSEM was performed based on direct and
indirect effects. Particularly, coefficients of both paths between SCRM and CSEM (ß1) as
well as CSEM and CSLO (ß2) were used to calculate the indirect effect of SCRM on CSLO.

Figure 2. Structural model

Parameter estimations displayed in Table 4 confirmed that SCRM has a significant impact on
customer loyalty (ß = 0.53, t = 8.66, P = 0.000), SCRM has a significant impact on customer
empowerment (ß = 0.39, t = 6.50, P = 0.000) and customer empowerment has a significant
impact on customer loyalty (ß = 0.41, t = 7.33, P = 0.000). That is, hypotheses 1, 2 and 3
were accepted.
Table 4. Results of hypotheses testing
Path Direct effects Indirect effect t value P value
SCRM CSLO 0.53 8.66 0.000
0.16
SCRM CSEM 0.39 6.50 0.000
CSEMCSLO 0.41 7.33 0.000
The results in Table 4 indicated that customer empowerment significantly mediated the effect
of SCRM on customer loyalty (ß = 0.41, P = 0.000). Consequently, hypothesis 4 was
accepted. The total effect of SCRM on customer loyalty equals 0.69.
5. Discussion and conclusion
The aim of this study was to clarify the impact of SCRM on customer loyalty through
customer empowerment. Using a sample of social media users who use social media applications
more than one time and follow at least one brand, participants inclusion was based on these two

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conditions. The results revealed that all hypotheses were accepted. In agreement of Trainor et al.
(2014), the results of this study displayed that SCRM was significantly related to customer
empowerment and customer loyalty. Nure (2018) and Yerpude and Singhal (2018) explained the
impact of SCRM on customer loyalty by showing that the goal of SCRM is to meet customers’
needs and offerings them a value better than the value provided by competitors. This in turn will
ensure customer loyalty (Ghafari et al., 2011). More than that, the results implied that SCRM was
also significantly affect customer empowerment. For Mangold and Faulds (2009), customer
empowerment is a critical component for SCRM due to the fact that the aim of customer
relationship management that implemented via social media is to get informational feedback
from customer to satisfy their needs (Peppard, 2000 and Bull, 2003). Customer empowerment
was found to have a significant impact on customer loyalty. Similar findings on significant and
positive relationships between customer empowerment and customer loyalty were found by
Rishika et al. (2013), Bhat and Darzi (2016), Grissemann and Stokburger-Sauer (2012) and Fuchs
and Schreier (2011). In terms of the mediation role of customer empowerment, the results made
clear that customer empowerment significantly mediated the effect of SCRM on customer
loyalty. Accordingly, SCRM has direct and indirect effects on customer loyalty. No previous
studies have been found to support or contradict this result. However, Dutot (2013) described
SCRM as function of customer empowerment. Fuchs and Schreier (2011) illustrated that one
positive outcome of customer empowerment is improvement in customer behaviors such as
loyalty. Agnihotri et al. (2012) explicated that using social medial by companies will better
relationships with customers, which in turn ameliorate their degree of loyalty (He et al., 2013).
6. Theoretical, practical and social implications
Some theoretical, practical and social implications were occasioned by the results of this
study. Theoretically, the current study enriched the literature of marketing through introducing a
model in which resource-based view, equity theory and relationship marketing are concurrently
interacted to yield value form companies and customers. Researchers based on the current
findings should be aware that customer empowerment is not an optional requirement but a critical
factor mediates the impact of SCRM on customer loyalty. In practical terms, using social media
applications in the context of relationship management improves customer loyalty. However, it is
not necessarily the only cause of this positive effect. The current study confirmed that customer
empowerment is necessary when banks use social relations management because this variable
helps improve customer loyalty. Accordingly, banks should consider empowering customers as a
reward for the customer and not merely consulting the customer and getting to know his
suggestions without adopting them. The application of customer empowerment must also be a
physical matter, not a formality, so that the customer can contribute to solving the problems
facing him and have options for restoring the service. It is clear from the above that the bank uses
its resources to achieve its goals through achieving customer loyalty with a focus on the
assumptions of equity theory that requires customer empowerment. Socially, the results of the
current study confirmed that using social media, which is very popular among customers, makes
it easier for them to engage in their banking transactions. Large, reliable and highly professional
companies provide social media; therefore, banks have to use social media applications to
achieve their goals. Communication with customers through these applications is a modern trend
that should replace traditional trends, especially if the bank adopts CRM system. From this
standpoint, the social implications lie in that social communication becomes faster, more
effective, and easier without being restricted to a specific time through social applications. This is
an invitation to banks to employ social media in customer relationship management.
7. Limitation and recommendations
The study was conducted using a sample of social media users who use social media
applications more than once a week and who follow a particular brand using these
applications using a sample of 412 participants. The study recommends using a larger sample

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of participants. On the other hand, data were collected within a specified period, which means
that the current study is cross-sectional one. Therefore, it was recommended to conduct a
longitudinal study. In terms of measuring variables, the present study did not take into
consideration the switching barriers that prevent the customer from switching to other
companies. Therefore, the study recommends researchers to consider this dimension.
McMullan and Gilmore’s (2008) study has shown that developing loyalty requires rewarding
customers on an ongoing basis. Finally, customer empowerment in line with equity theory
should be considered as a reward delivered to customers.

Acknowledgment
The authors extend their appreciation to the reviewers for their constructive and helpful
comments.

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