Research On Incentive Mechanism Of Customer Knowledge Sharing

Era of knowledge economy, knowledge has become the key strategic resource and competitive factor for the enterprise and is playing more important role than the foregone resources. However, this traditional mode of independent development which the enterprise only rely on itself to form the required knowledge and skills has been unable to adapt to the needs of the modern global high-tech competition, so the enterprise must look for the support of external resources and knowledge.At the same time, the customer has gradually transformed from the traditional passive accepter of the goods and service trade to active participants in the operation activities of the enterprise, and creates the value together with enterprise. Therefore, the importance of customer knowledge is increasingly obvious. Customer knowledge sharing can make the customer knowledge freely flow and use between the customer and the enterprise, save the acquisition costs of customer knowledge and improve the use efficiency of customer knowledge.Customer knowledge sharing can provide the bases of creating sustainable competitive advantage for enterprise, but it does not automatically appear, so the key of solving the problem about customer knowledge sharing is to establish the harmonious atmosphere of customer knowledge sharing and flexible and effective incentive mechanism. In recent years, though scholars have made a number of research results on the incentive mechanism of customer knowledge, but the existing researches are not enough systematic and in-depth, because they lack the consideration on the form of customer, the rational of customer, relationships among customers and game relationships between customer knowledge sharing participants, and the depth and breadth of qualitative and quantitative study are not enough , so that they can not meet the real needs of solving the incentive problem of customer knowledge sharing. Therefore, the study on incentive mechanism of customer knowledge sharing has important theoretical and practical significance.Based on incentive theory and game theory and according to customer knowledge sharing process and features, the thesis fully considers the form of customer, the rational of customer, relationships among customers and game relationship between customer knowledge sharing participants to research the incentive mechanism of customer knowledge sharing. In light of the main form of customer, customer knowledge sharing can be divided into individual customer knowledge sharing and enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing, and it accords with the features of customer knowledge sharing much more that combining this thought and the basic principles of incentive theory and game theory to respectively investigate the incentive mechanism of individual customer knowledge sharing and enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing.This thesis begins with the definition of basis concepts related to customer knowledge sharing and incentive mechanism, analyzes the composing integrants and approaches of customer knowledge sharing, discusses the influence factors and process of customer knowledge sharing, summarizes the appliance of game theory to knowledge sharing and researches the reasons for forming the game relation in customer knowledge sharing. On this basis, we make the economic analyses of customer knowledge sharing incentive mechanism; propose the incentive mode and incentive principles of customer knowledge sharing, and design the theoretical framework of incentive mechanism of customer knowledge sharing to provide the theoretical basis for the establishment of incentive mechanism models.In the research on incentive mechanism model of individual customer knowledge sharing, according to the difference of sharing participants, we divide on-enterprise customer knowledge sharing into knowledge sharing between individual customer and enterprise and knowledge sharing among individual customers. Individual customer has completed rational when he/she shares knowledge with enterprise, but has bounded rational when he/she shares knowledge with other individual customers. Based on this idea and the basic principle of principal-agent model, we take the information structure into account in the course of the study to build the incentive mechanism model of knowledge sharing between individual customer and enterprise, at the same time, we build the incentive mechanism model of knowledge sharing among individual customers according to the basic principles of evolutionary game theory. Then we solve the optimal incentive mechanism or stable equilibrium point of two incentive mechanism models, and analyze the impact of the change of each parameter change on the incentive mechanism of individual customer knowledge sharing and evolution trends of system.In the research on incentive mechanism model of enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing, according to the relationships among enterprise-type customers, the incentive mechanism models of enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing under the condition of horizontal competition and under the conditions of horizontal cooperation are constructed. It accords with the actual situation of incentive problem of enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing under horizontal competitive conditions to introduce the profit level of competitor which is an exogenous variable and can be observed into incentive mechanism model and fully consider its influence on incentive compensation and agency costs. We think the enterprise-type customers under horizontal cooperation conditions as a team, establish the incentive mechanism model based on the knowledge sharing output of the entire team, and provide the solution for the potential free-rider problem.Finally, the thesis applies the presented relevant models and methods to BYD Company Ltd. to establish the incentive mechanism of customer knowledge sharing. By selecting the relevant data, we establish incentive mechanism of individual customer knowledge sharing for BYD through applying incentive mechanism model of individual customer knowledge sharing and solving the optimal incentive mechanism or stable equilibrium point. Simultaneously, we establish incentive mechanism of enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing for BYD through applying incentive mechanism model of enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing and solve the free-rider problem in the enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing under the conditions of horizontal cooperation. By evaluating the implementation performance of incentive mechanism of customer knowledge sharing, the rationality and feasibility of incentive mechanism models proposed in the thesis are testified.In the course of the study, we comprehensively take advantage of the existing research outcomes, combine the reasonable elements of the customer knowledge sharing theory, incentive theory and game theory, on this basis, systematically propose the theoretical research framework and implementation approach of incentive mechanism of customer knowledge sharing, build the incentive mechanism models of individual customer knowledge sharing and enterprise-type customer knowledge sharing. It makes the thesis innovative and instructive both in theory and in practice.