Journal of Statistics and Information

Whether digital transformation can help enterprises better integrate and optimize customer relationships is an important issue in both theoretical and practical circles.Based on the data of Chinese listed companies from 2007-2022,opply Python to crawl the analysis text of the annual reports of all listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets, and combine word frequency analysis technology to construct enterprise digital transformation indicator.By using the indicator, the impact and mechanism of digital transformation on enterprises' customer relationships are empirically examined.Further, the economic consequences of adjusting enterprise customer relationships are explored under the background of digital transformation.The main findings are as follows.First, digital transformation can significantly promote the decentralization of enterprise customer relationships.Moreover, after undergoing a series of robustness tests such as endogeneity treatment, replacing key variables, adjusting regression samples, and changing econometric models, the above conclusion still holds.Second, mechanism analysis shows that digital transformation can promote the decentralization of customer relationships by enhancing the enterprises' competitive position in the market and impoving its customers' satisfaction.The basic logic is that, on the one hand, digital transformation can enhance the enterprises' market competitiveness, which will help it enter a larger market, and acquire a larger customer base.On the other hand, digital transformation can alleviate information asymmetry between enterprises and their customers, which will ensure the enterprises quickly adjust their products or services to improve their customers' satisfaction and be helpful to attract target customers to actively seek cooperation with upstream enterprises.Third, heterogeneity analysis indicates that digital transformation has a greater impact on the diversification of customer relationships for enterprises in areas with high levels of openness to the outside world, non-state-owned and non durable goods industries, strong intellectual property protection, and high market integration.Therefore, the government needs to strictly adhere to the principle of differentiation, formulate targeted and differentiated support measures for enterprises with different characteristics and in different external environments, and implement policies tailored to each enterprise.Finally, the economic consequences test shows that under the background of digital transformation, the diversification of enterprise customer relationships can not only reduce their business risks, but also increase their business performance.Therefore, in the face of increasingly fierce market competition, enterprises should seize the opportunities of digital economy development, and accelerate the deep integration of digital technology with production, operation, and organizational management methods.By harnessing the power of digital transformation, enterprises can optimize their supply chain customer relationships reasonably, reduce excessive dependence on large customers in the supply chain, and achieve synergistic improvement between operational efficiency and operational safety.This research provides a useful supplement for understanding the link between enterprise digital transformation and customer relationships' integratation and optimization, which can help to provides empirical evidence for the government's precise policy, enterprise digital transformation strategy and supply chain management.