Empirical Study On The Relationship Between Customer Knowledge Management And Organizational Performance

In recent years, with the global knowledge-based economy, as well as the rapid development of technology information so that enterprises are facing increased pressure to innovate, so many companies to introduce the customer knowledge management(CKM) concepts and practices, through alliances with customers and learning to adapt to environmental changes. As the development and extension of knowledge management and customer relationship management, it has been recognized that customer knowledge management has great influence on organizational performance, at the same time; many enterprises have already carried out the corresponding practice. Therefore, the search on the construction of the model of customer knowledge management and its relationship with organizational performance become the popular research focus. Wayland and Cole in 1997 first put forward the definition and the theoretical models of Customer Knowledge Management; it is a new research field, while the domestic research is still at the initial stage. Many scholars propose the great influence that customer knowledge management has on organizational performance based on different theories, and a lot of researchers pay more attention on the construction of the model of CKM. However, because the theory itself mostly arrived from certain single perspective, while with the lack of practical support, the conclusions of the study still have certain shortcomings.At the same time, empirical research in this field is still rare.This study takes Chinese enterprises as background, based on the thoroughly literature review of research in this field, the model of customer knowledge management based on the customer knowledge activities is put forward and the relationship between customer knowledge management and organizational performance is verified through empirical research. In order to make the research more precise, comprehensive and innovative, following the core concept of customer knowledge management, three parts of research work are conducted.First of all, construction of customer knowledge management model. The typical model constructed by Wayland and Cole (1997), Garcia-Murillo (2002), Tiwana (2001), Gebert (2003) and Swift (2001) are reviewed and analyzed on three viewpoints: CRM-based business processes research, KM-based business process research and contextual factors of CKM. Base on the literature review, this thesis synthesized those researchers' opinions, and construct the customer knowledge management model. The customer knowledge management model is composes of five customer knowledge activities, and includes four contextual factors and customer knowledge repository.Then, development and recension of the questionnaires. Base on the construction of customer knowledge management model, further the research divides the customer knowledge management into five dimensions: customer knowledge acquisition, customer knowledge integration, customer knowledge sharing, customer knowledge use and customer knowledge innovation. And the reliability and validity of the scale are verified through empirical research. At the same time, customer response capacity is another core concept in this research. Base on the questionnaire designed by Jayachandran, Herett and Kaufman in 2004, which divide customer response capacity into two dimensions, and the theories of customer service and customer satisfaction, this research further specified three dimensions of customer response capacity: customer response speed, customer response expertise and customer response accessibility. The reliability and validity of this scale are verified through empirical research.At last, this research further used the model we had constructed and the scale we had developed above to the study of organizational performance. And used five kinds of customer knowledge activities as the antecedent variables and three kinds of customer response capacities as the mediator factors to build and test an organizational performance improvement model. Based on the data acquired through questionnaire administration, the research tests the hypothesis and theoretical model. We got the results as follows: (1) customer knowledge management plays an important role in the improving of organizational performance, however, the role five customer knowledge activities plays varies from one to another, in which customer knowledge sharing has no significant effect on the improvement of organizational performance, and customer knowledge innovation is the most important factors, customer knowledge integration is the second, customer knowledge use is the third and customer knowledge acquisition is the fourth. (2) Customer response capacity is the mediator between customer knowledge management and organizational performance. Specifically, customer response capacity is not the mediator between customer knowledge sharing and organizational performance for the influence customer knowledge sharing plays on organizational performance is not significant. Customer response speed is the full-mediator between customer knowledge acquisition, customer knowledge use and organizational performance, is the semi-mediator between customer knowledge integration and organizational performance and it is not the mediator between customer knowledge innovation and organizational performance. Customer response expertise is the full-mediator between customer knowledge acquisition, customer knowledge use and organizational performance. Customer response accessibility is the full-mediator between customer knowledge acquisition and organizational performance, and it is the semi-mediator between customer innovation and organization performance. (3) We find two surprising result, that the customer response accessibility has significant influence on customer response speed and customer response expertise. (4) The research gives out reasonable explanation and analysis of the hypothesis and the surprising results.The main contribution of this research is as follows: (1) Rely on knowledge management and customer relationship management theory, the research constructs a customer knowledge activities-based customer knowledge management model. (2) Customer knowledge management has been divided into five dimensions: customer knowledge acquisition, customer knowledge integration, customer knowledge sharing, customer knowledge use and customer knowledge innovation, and developed a scale with the good reliability and validity. (3) Proposed and verified the model of customer knowledge management—customer response capacity—organizational performance.