Knowledge Management and Customer Care are regarded to be able to strengthen the competitive capability of a company. Knowledge Management is supposed to increase the innovative power for problem solving whereas Customer Relationship Management is supposed to increase the customer satisfaction and thereby the customer loyalty. This case study followed a mixed approach to combine aspects from the Knowledge Management and the Customer Relationship Management. Matter of this study was a small-size organization that had a demand for a ticket system for the 2nd and 3rd level support as part of their customer service. Because of an increasing volume of incoming requests, it was necessary to change the system from e-mail clients to a ticket system. Additionally, the company wanted to assure that all agents are able to process all types of requests in order to keep up good service quality even if the experts are not available. For this reason, the concept of this study was not only to introduce a ticket system, but also to implement a Knowledge Base storing the knowledge how to solve the requests in shape of sample solutions. The aim of the study was to find out whether such an approach would be possible, what the success influencing factors would be and what effect such an approach would have on the overall Knowledge Management practices. For this purpose the study made use of qualitative research methods, like interviews and observations, throughout the whole project’s duration. As a result, the project was not able to deliver the desired insights completely. The introduction of the pure ticket system was very successful as the employees reported an improvement of their working processes. The Knowledge Base however was not used during the observation period at all. As a standard risk for projects, late hardware delivery, turned into a problem and used up the planed buffers, the remaining time for observation, whether the Knowledge Base would be used or not, was too short. Therefore, it is necessary to do a follow-up study and assess whether the effect only is late or there is no effect. It might even be necessary to prove the approach in another environment, as the studied company very much relies on the personalization approach for Knowledge Management. Because of the well developed communication culture at the studied company, the employees prefer direct communication for knowledge sharing and knowledge transfer. That inhibits knowledge codification as a Knowledge Management approach. This itself, of course is a valuable insight.

This study explores the implications for knowledge creation of customer knowledge in a contact center’s CRM system. A previously developed research model which depicts CRM systems’ support to knowledge creation of customer knowledge was utilized for evaluation and comparison of collected data. Data was collected through observations semi-structured interviews with 14 customer service agents who utilized a CRM system in a contact center at a medium-sized European airline.Analysis of the data suggests that the CRM system’s support for knowledge creation of customer knowledge is in line with previous research. Additionally, the results indicate that there are two processes, knowledge base usage and internal communication processes, which have the potential to increase the CRM system’s support. Based on the reviewed literature, this study suggests that organizational culture and IT infrastructure, are two tools which could be utilized to incorporate those two processes better into the organization’s CRM system.

The service economy is flourishing and due to high competition, manufacturers are turning to service innovation as way to distinguish and meet their customers increasing and changing demands. Service design and an increased utilization of employees are seen as way of improving the innovative capabilities. The aim of this thesis is to explore in a manufacturing company undergoing servitization, what is the role of front-line-employees (FLE) for service innovation and in what ways can front-line-employees be leveraged to enhance a firm’s service innovation capability? To do so, a hermeneutical research approach was adopted to interpret both FLEs collective customer understanding and the strategic view from management and service design within a company. Results reveal an encountered complexity and unstructured development of customer knowledge through long ongoing relations where the continuous identification of customer needs is a unformalized process and FLEs are relying on experience and tacit knowledge to do so. The study identifies FLEs as a resource to innovation, with aggregated customer knowledge, product knowledge and practice knowledge and are mainly contributing as a supporting actor in the innovation process. The study makes a contribution by emphasizing the needed support to empower FLEs as contributors to service innovation. Service design tools and techniques are a suggested way to provide structure and formalization in the involvement of FLEs into the innovation process. Future studies should aim to validate and explore the suggestions further through a comprehensive study of the inter-organizational customer knowledge creation and dissemination and its effect on service innovation.

Medical Cosmoceutical service is a new rising medical service in recent 5 years. It combines medical profession and cosmetic service, offering customers integrated aesthetic therapy services that are safe, reliable, delicate and effective. Due to medical cosmoceutical is a popular and self-payed medical service not limited to any specific medical field by law, it is undouhtedly an effective way of business transformation for the medical institutes with difficult running under poor National Health Insurance policy. Therefore, many plastic surgery and dermatological clinics, and other medical field even beauty salons, quite to establish their medical cosmoceutical service for competing this big market. Surviving the strong competition in this hot market of medical cosmoceutical is an important issue for every member of the plastic surgery field that seeks to succeed in this medical cosmoceutical business. The key successful factor for plastic surgery field in medical cosmoceutical shall be an innovative strategy and innovative business model that leads to attracting and retaining customers. Through literature review and the practice data of T Union Clinic of Plastic Surgery based on its mamagement philosophy and business model, this study proposes the following three innovative strategies for medical cosmoceutical service: (1) Pioneer into the offering of medical cosmoceutical service that providing dedicated post-cosmetic surgery massage therapy ; (2) Pioneer into the research and development of skin care product therapeutic compound formula; and (3) Pioneer into the training and certification center for medical aesthetician. Followed by the dimensions of four innovative business model listed below, successful business performance will be obtained through the offering of comprehensive service attachment that enhances customers¡¦ willingness to accept such services. The four innovative business models comprise: (1) Knowledge transfer to customers, by delivering medical cosmetic knowledge for promoting trustworthiness from customers; (2) Customer relationship management (CRM) ,with higher customer value through maintaining close relationship with customers by offering multiple two-way communication channels; (3) Experience marketing, by creating word-of-month effects, and (4) Strategic alliance, through the referrals from related clinics, beauty salons, and affiliated medical cosmetic workshops to acquire more customers. In the verification of innovative strategies and business models for medical cosmoceutical business, this study adopts both qualitative and quantitative research methodology to provide deep insights and findings. In qualitative research, a small scale qualitative ¡§customer in-depth interview¡¨ is conducted on the medical cosmoceutical customers (5 people) of the T Union Clinic of Plastic Surgery, to verify accuracy of the innovative strategies and business model, followed by a large scale quantitative questionnaire survey (100 people) on the customers that are randomly drawn from the customers of T Union Clinic of Plastic Surgery. With quantitative data derived from the survey, the viability of the innovative strategies and innovative models are further verified. In conclusion, the research finding is that after quantitative and qualitative verification from the customer perspective, the three innovative strategies and four innovative business models proposed for medical cosmoceutical business has been indeed proved as the successful model for medical cosmoceutical business in the plastic surgery field, and is also commonly accepted by the medical cosmoceutical customers. Furthermore, an additional insight extracted from the verification in customer perspective is the need for designing of system for employee training and encouragement. By this, the effectiveness of transfering knowledge to customers and service quality delivery will be expected to enhance. So, this study adds the fifth dimension ¡§Employee training and encouragement¡¨ to the innovative business model. In the point of view of management implicatin, when performing the innovative strategy and innovative business model for medical cosmoceutical business in plastic surgery field, one should pay more attension to two management aspects, including internal management and external customer service. In the peer suggestion, the three innovative strategies and the four innovative business model proposed by this study are practically viable and may serve as the practical suggestions for the plastic surgery peer when providing medical cosmoceutical service.

Abstract: Business-to-business (B2B) marketing involves several components including the marketing management decision-making process and the buying behaviors of the B2B clientele and the end users. Disregarding customer knowledge management (CKM) and inaccurate analysis of data cost companies billions of dollars per year. The objective of this exploratory single-case study was to develop an in-depth analysis of the problem that some marketing managers have limited knowledge of how to use CKM strategies to improve B2B customer engagement. The dynamic capabilities and technological opportunism theories comprised the study's conceptual framework. Data collection consisted of participant observations, member checking, and semistructured interviews with 4 Dallas-based, managers at various levels of responsibility within a single B2B company. The data analysis entailed using an adaptation of Giorgi's systematic text condensation and inductive coding techniques of reoccurring themes. The themes that emerged indicated a need to improve marketing strategies. These themes included developing a division wide marketing plan, devising a CKM tool, and initiating organization wide CKM protocols and training. Beneficiaries of this research are marketing managers, marketing practitioners, organizational strategy and policy makers, and students of business administration. Implications for social change include specifying the strategies that business leaders need to improve sustainability.

Fintech has had a huge growth in Sweden during the last decades. Increased competition has made companies compete over resources to attend to customer needs. The access to customer knowledge is one of those resources. This thesis is exploring the if, how and when companies within the Swedish fintech industry use customer knowledge and customers in co-creation processes. The research was conducted with a literature review and empirically investigated with semi-structured interviews. The findings imply that customer knowledge and customer involvement is present in Swedish fintech. Companies in Swedish fintech don’t use only one approach to involve customers but rather switch according to convenience. When it comes to the phases of innovation the findings imply that companies mostly involve customers in the ideation phase and customers in an intermediate phase between development and commercialization where there are a lot of iterative interactions between customer and company. / Fintech har haft en enorm tillväxt i Sverige under de senaste decennierna. Ökad konkurrens har fått företag att konkurrera om resurser för att tillgodose kundernas behov. Tillgången till kundkännedom är en av dessa resurser. Detta examensarbete undersöker om, hur och när företag inom den svenska fintech branschen använder kundkunskap och kunder i samskapande processer. Forskningen genomfördes med en litteraturgenomgång och empiriskt undersökt med semistrukturerade intervjuer. Resultaten tyder på att kundkännedom och kundengagemang finns inom den Svenska fintech industrin. Företag inom svensk fintech använder inte bara ett tillvägagångssätt för att involvera kunder utan byter snarare efter bekvämlighet. När det gäller innovations faserna antyder resultaten att företag mest involverar kunder i idéfasen och kunder i en mellanfas mellan utveckling och kommersialisering där det sker många iterativa interaktioner mellan kund och företag.

和顧客保持長期關係，對於企業經營是有利的，然而，由於資訊科技的進步與物流效率的提升，顧客越來越來越聰明，要尋找並取得替代產品與服務也越來越容易。在這樣的環境前提下，如何使顧客願意與企業維持長期關係而不轉向競爭者，是企業的一大挑戰。在文獻探討中本文發現，其關鍵是在於要能夠持續與顧客互動並了解顧客，並且將這些了解應用於產品設計、流程設計與組織設計。對於顧客的了解，本文定義其為顧客知識，就成為了顧客關係的基石。不過，由於與顧客的接觸點越多，了解顧客的管道就越多，其整合上有一定的難度，而資訊科技與傳統行銷方法都能夠產生對於顧客的了解，再加上產生並應用對於顧客的了解，以塑造顧客在消費與使用產品與服務時能得到高度的滿意，已經企業所有部門的責任，這樣跨部門的作業也不是一件簡單的事，這些議題都是企業在顧客知識管理上所需面對的。 在過往的文獻中所談的顧客知識管理，很多都混淆顧客資訊與知識，較無探討企業如何加工與顧客互動所得到的資訊，因此無法清楚了解企業在顧客知識管理上所作的貢獻為何。本文就以流程觀點，並以目前市場需求飽和且競爭激烈的人壽保險產業中的一家企業：保誠人壽為例，探討企業內的顧客知識流程，並且探討主要的影響因素，以了解企業在顧客知識管理上所作的努力。 而在本文個案的探訪後，本文還嘗試以服務業作業系統的角度，提出一種顧客知識的新分類：前台作業所需的顧客知識、後台作業所需的顧客知識，並且根據個案中保誠人壽的實際做法，修正文獻探討所提出的顧客知識管理架構，並且提出三種顧客知識管理的類型以及提出其管理重點，以作為實務界與後人研究的參考。 / It is beneficial for an enterprise to keep long-term relationship with its customers. However, owing to advances of information technology and the improvement of logistics efficiency, it is not difficult to search and acquire better products and services to substitute for what they are using now. Under these circumstances, it is a challenge for enterprises to retain their customers. How to do this? The answer in literatures is: to gain more customer insights (defined as customer knowledge in this study) through interactions with customers and apply them in product design, process design and organizational structure design. Therefore customer knowledge is the basics of long-term relationships with customers. But still, there are issues. First, an enterprise may have many contact points with its customers. Then, there are traditional ways versus information technology ways to generate customer knowledge. Finally, an enterprise has to think how to address appropriate customer knowledge to right departments and use them to enhance the total experience when interacting with customers. These are all issues an enterprise has to face with when trying to do “Customer Knowledge Management” (CKM). Most of past studies on CKM did not tell the difference between information and knowledge, thus can not clearly define what contributions an enterprise makes when implementing CKM. This study attempts to investigate practices of CKM in an enterprise in life insurance industry, in which the demand is saturated and the competition is fierce, from a process perspective to manifest how customer knowledge is generated and applied, and what main factors are to affect CKM in an enterprise. After investigation of the case, this study proposes a new framework, from the operation system in service industry, to classify customer knowledge into two categories: customer knowledge needed for front-office operations, and customer knowledge needed for back-office operations. In addition, according to practices in this case, this study will revise the CKM process framework proposed right after the literature review, and will raise keys to successful CKM in CKM processes, for the reference for following studies.

在快速變動的環境下，全球企業致力於持續創新以維持競爭優勢。創新是不同知識重組的過程。技術知識與顧客知識成為建構知識互補，達到創新的重要因素。過去的研究著重於測試互補效果的存在以及對於結果的影響。然而，針對知識互補的過程缺乏詳細的瞭解。本研究的目的即希望經由瞭解技術知識與顧客知識如何互補達到創新的過程，對於知識互補建構完整的概念。本研究包含兩個研究問題: (1) 如何定義兩種組織知識（技術知識與顧客知識）的知識互補？(2) 組織如何管理知識互補（技術知識與顧客知識）以達到創新？ 本研究經過反覆的文獻探討及深度個案訪談後，將知識互補定義為一種狀態，當某一種知識提供另外一種知識的缺乏，經過知識互動後增加為了達到某個特定目的的全部價值。此外，建構知識互補過程開始於察覺為了達到某個特定目標知識的不足，進而確認另一種知識來補足它。經過知識互動後，互動的深度及廣度有所變化，兩種知識可能逐漸增加或產生知識質變而達到創新。 本研究基於文獻探討及個案分析的結果提出五個命題。命題主要是針對知識互補的過程、階段及不同類型的知識互補進行探討。本研究發現知識互補有三種型態：基礎性互補、突現性互補及機會性互補。 本研究利用動態觀點分析研發及業務部門知識互動情形，進而瞭解組織建構知識互補的過程。這種過程導向的研究不僅發現知識互補的存在，更進一步解釋知識互補的建構過程。組織可藉由動態管理知識互動以建構知識互補的過程，來達到持續創新的目的。本研究著重於知識本身，知識互補的概念、流程及型態對於創新及知識管理提供未來進一步研究的基礎。 / Global enterprises are currently engaged in continuous innovation to compete and sustain themselves in the dynamic changing market. The development of innovation is a process of novel combination of different kinds of knowledge. Both technological and customer knowledge have been identified as crucial for building knowledge complementarity for delivery of innovation. Researches have examined the existence of complementarity between inputs and the effect of output. Nevertheless, detailed understanding of the process of knowledge complementarity development is still lacking. The objective of this study is to develop a complete concept of knowledge complementarity with a thorough understanding of how technological knowledge complements customer knowledge in the process of adaptation and innovation. There are two research questions, as follows. (1) How can we define knowledge complementarity between the two kinds of organizational knowledge (technological knowledge and customer knowledge)? (2) How do organizations manage knowledge complementarity between technological knowledge and customer knowledge for innovation? Through iterative analyses of the existing literature and examination of empirical data, this study clarifies the definition of knowledge complementarity as a situation in which one source supplies knowledge that another source lacks, thus increasing the total value for achieving a specific purpose through knowledge interaction. The process of building knowledge complementarity starts with sensing the insufficiency of knowledge for a specific goal and identifying sources that can satisfy the deficiency. Then, through knowledge interactions, the scope and depth of the knowledge of the interactive parties are increased and evolved, resulting in an increased innovative value for the specific purpose. Based on the literature review and observation of case studies of T Probe Card and Cyber Software, five propositions were formulated. These propositions concern the sequences of the process of knowledge complementarity and different types of knowledge interaction for knowledge complementarity. The three types of knowledge complementarity identified are: infrastructural complementarity, emergent complementarity, and opportunity complementarity. In different to the static view to examine the relationship between knowledge management variables, this study uses a dynamic view to understand knowledge interaction between R&D and sales department in the process of building knowledge complementarity. This process-oriented study not only examines the existence of complementarity but also provides the explanation for "how" something happened and the sequence of events leading to the outcome. Rather than placing focus on the interactive activities, the underlying point of this study is on the knowledge itself. Operationalizable indexes of the scope and depth of knowledge interaction have been clearly developed for the purpose of examining knowledge interaction and their interplay in different types of knowledge complementarity. The concept, process and distinctive types of knowledge complementarity provide essential input to innovation and knowledge management. Organizations intent to build sustained innovation capability could benefit from this study by dynamically managing knowledge interactions for complementarity of different purposes.

Background: The globalization has made organizations knowledge based and knowledge as a key resource in order to keep up with the changing market. Therefore, knowledge management became increasingly important which also was customer-centric throughout the whole supply chain in order to create customer value. With knowledge management being important, transfer barriers arose and as the increased collection of customer data was also evident as a result of organizations becoming tmore customer-centric and the rapid changes in technology. As a result of this, privacy issues about the data of the customer arose which lead to the implementation of GDPR. Research Questions: What are the challenges and possibilities of the processes of customer knowledge transfer between organizations in a distributor-dealer relationship? In what way has the implementation of GDPR affected the transfer of customer knowledge between a distributor and a dealer? Purpose: The purpose of this study is to examine how customer knowledge is maintained and transferred between organizations within a distributor-dealer relationship. In addition, the paper aim to investigate what forces affects the processes of transferring customer knowledge within these types of relationships. Furthermore, the study investigates what effects transfer barriers and the implementation of GDPR has on customer knowledge transfer within a distributor-dealer relationship. Method: The paper investigated two cases. One case entailed one distributor and one dealer which had a relationship through a common supply chain. The qualitative data was obtained through 13 semi-structured interviews. Conclusion: This study proves that customer knowledge transfer has both challenges and possibilities in a supply chain with a distributor and dealer relationship. Furthermore, there are several factors that affect this transfer such as communication, customer relationship management and transfer barriers. In addition, GDPR has barely any impact on the customer knowledge transfer. However, it does have an impact on the processes of organizations and can be seen as an opportunity for organizations even if organizations sometimes choose to see the negative aspects.

What is the influence of Information Technology (IT) capability, and customer relationship management (CRM) capability on organisational information privacy protection behaviour, and ultimately how do these relationships impact on organizational performance? What are the relationships between different types of IT capabilities (i.e. outside-in, inside-out, and spanning capabilities) and how do they impact on performance (i.e. directly or indirectly)? This survey study attempted to answer these questions by empirically testing a research model based on the Resource Based-View (RBV) of the firm and the Comparative Advantage Theory of Competition to examine these relationships in the context of New Zealand firms engaged in IT supported CRM activities. RBV theory claims different subsets of a firm's resources (i.e. assets and capabilities) enable it to achieve initial and long-term competitive advantage (Barney, 1991). The role of different types of IS resources in achieving advantage has not been fully explored with some prior work finding evidence of direct effects but most finding only indirect effects of IS resources in general (Wade & Hulland, 2004). In addition, Comparative Advantage Theory claims a comparative advantage in resources leads to a competitive advantage in market position which in turn leads to superior financial performance (Hunt & Morgan, 1995). In turn, an organisation's use of customer information primarily for internal knowledge or external relationship building may be related to its privacy protection capability and how it measures performance (Greenaway & Chan, 2005) but these propositions had not yet been empirically tested. A review of the Information Systems literature showed that very little prior work had been done on organisational level privacy protection behaviours. The findings from my study begin to address these gaps in the literature. This research makes the following contributions to the academic literature on CRM. First, it empirically tested proposals found in the literature which suggested considering information privacy protection as a resource based on claims made by RBV theory. Second, the research splits IS capabilities into three groups (IS inside-out capability, outside-in capability and spanning capability), splits CRM capabilities into two groups (customer knowledge capability and customer relating capability) and splits organisational performance into two groups (effectiveness and efficiency) in order to assess the role of privacy protection practice as a mediating mechanism between different IS and CRM capabilities and organisational performance outcomes. The response data was analysed using Confirmatory Factor Analysis based on the Partial Least Squares parameter estimation technique, a form of Structural Equation Modelling. The findings show inside-out (internally focused) IT capabilities have a weak negative direct effect on customer relating capability. However, this can be mediated by investing in IT outside-in and IT spanning capabilities which have a positive impact on customer relating capability. Interestingly, IT Outside-in (externally focused) capabilities had a direct positive influence on customer knowledge capability. This was unexpected as earlier work predicted this relationship would be mediated by IT spanning resources. As expected, a comparative advantage in customer knowledge capability had a moderate direct positive impact on efficiency, measured as financial performance. It also had a moderate direct positive impact on producing a comparative advantage in customer relating capability. This supports CRM theory which claims that a better understanding of customers based on collecting and processing customer information can lead to a better customer relating capability. But, as predicted, no relationship to privacy protection capability was found. In contrast, using IT to gain a comparative advantage in customer relating capability had a direct positive impact on establishing privacy protection behaviours that exceed guidelines. Treating privacy protection as a resource also appears to lead to greater effectiveness which in turn leads to greater efficiency. In addition to contributing empirical evidence to support the conditions under which the proposed theoretical model applied, the results had several implications for practice. First, the findings provide organisations with greater awareness of how others in their industry are using IT to support customer relating and customer knowledge capabilities and how safeguarding or not safeguarding information privacy contributes directly to effectiveness and indirectly improves financial performance. Second, the findings are useful for raising consumer awareness about actual organisational information privacy practices. Most organisations in New Zealand reported meeting or exceeding industry guidelines. If the reported safeguards are in place and fair information handling practices are being followed, awareness of the results may help to reduce the high levels of privacy concern reported in consumer surveys. Lastly, privacy protection capabilities have a positive impact on performance, giving organisations an incentive to implement them.