Perceived Job Risk and Dark CRM : Heightened Role of Perceived Job Insecurity & Fear of COVID-19

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and its measures remain debatable in hospitality marketing and relationship marketing literature, whereas the dark side of CRM is hardly researched. COVID-19 has provided context to study dark-CRM in various contexts, opening multiple avenues for hospitality marketing and human resource management research. Constructed upon conservation of resource theory and vitamin model of job insecurity, this study examines the impact of the perceived risk associated with COVID-19 on dark-CRM with job strain's underlying mechanism. The current study is quantitative. The data was collected online from 253 employees serving in Pakistan's hospitality sector. The findings show that perceived human risk and internal environment risk significantly enhance D-CRM behavior. However, Job strain significantly mediates between perceived management risk and D-RCM. The fear of COVID-19 and job insecurity significantly moderates the effect of perceived equipment risk on job strain. This research is the first to empirically study the dark side of CRM; the measure of D-CRM is of significance to understand the behavior of employees from tactical to a strategic level and their customer orientation. Moreover, the paper applies the fear of the COVID-19 scale and D-CRM for the first time in the context of the hospitality industry in Pakistan. Some of the recent work has studied the impact of COVID-19 on hospitality and tourism with various lenses and with different perspectives. However, none of the researchers has examined the alarming effects on CRM