Customer knowledge management

Abstract

Customer knowledge has received little attention in the knowledge management literature. The authors of this exploratory study argue that practices in marketing and customer relationship management have not been able to capture knowledge from customers that comes from social interactions with firm employees. The authors propose a three-step model by which companies can obtain this knowledge. The model's theoretical base comes from the information retrieval and socialization concepts of the knowledge management literature. The paper identifies cultural changes required to make this process successful.