Research On Customer Tacit Knowledge Acquisition Of New Product Development's Front-end In The Customer Co-creation Environment

Customer's online and offline knowledge contribution and its value co-creation with enterprises have gradually become an important paradigm for new product development in the customer co-creation environment.While tacit knowledge embedded into customer's body and mind and situation is an indispensable basis and source to facilitate creative solutions of new products,thus it is extremely important to realize customer tacit knowledge acquisition in the new product development's front-end.However,compared with the practical emerging phenomena,the existing theory of customer tacit knowledge acquisition is in a lack of substantive studies,customer tacit knowledge acquisition is still a new research topic and its key problems needs to be systematically studied in theory.Meanwhile,tacit knowledge is restricted by its own attributes and complex factors in the knowledge management field,so that its acquisition issue is always the key and difficulty of research.Therefore,from the practical development and theoretical needs,it is of great theoretical and practical significance to study customer tacit knowledge acquisition of new product development's front-end in customer co-creation environment.In this paper,based on knowledge science,organization science,information technology,knowledge network and system science theories,it systematically studied customers tacit knowledge acquisition problems including acquisition dependence,process and model,pathway and mechanism,network model and influencing factors in customer co-creation environment by using the methods of case study,theoretical reasoning,network modeling and empirical study.That these critical and difficult issues are solved is of important theoretical and practical significance to realize customer tacit knowledge acquisition of new product development's front-end,expand related theories of customer tacit knowledge acquisition,promote the integration of knowledge management and emerging information and communication technology,and create new product ideas and new product development in the customer co-creation environment.First of all,this paper reviews and discusses the relevant theoretical basis,including customer knowledge theory,knowledge acquisition theory,technology media theory,knowledge network theory and complex system theory.On the basis of defining the new product development front-end and its co-creation situation,this paper deeply explores the unique connotation and essential attributes of customer tacit knowledge.As customer tacit knowledge embedded in customer's body and mind,behavior and situation has essential attributes such as embodiment,practice and situation,it puts forward that customer tacit knowledge acquisition have the socialization approach dependence: inter-subjectivity multi-dimensional interaction process.It is reflected in terms of embodied participation,practical behavior,multidimentional interaction and special situation of corporate R&D teams and customers.Customer tacit knowledge acquisition's socialized dependence is the theoretical basis and premise of the following research.Secondly,in the socialized dependence,three typical and representative cases are formed out of practical phenomena by way of case selection,data collection,reliability and validity,and other research procedures.It elaborates an offline socialization process,an online socialization process and an offline and online combined socialization process of customer tacit knowledge acquisition at the new product development's front-end in the customer value co-creation environment.Thus three typical models of customer tacit knowledge acquisition are put forward,that is,an offline face-to-face socialization acquisition pattern,an online cross-regional multimedia socialization acquisition pattern,and an online and offline combined socialization acquisition pattern.These typ es of socialization acquisition patterns establish the foundation for constructing a new unified path theory.Thirdly,adhering to socialization dependence and integrating socialization acquisition patterns,this paper points out the practical limitation o f Nonaka's socialization theory interpretation on tacit knowledge acquisition in cross-regional and combined situations,and also indicates the breakthrough of three socialized acquisition patterns on Nonaka's socialization theory in terms of breadth and depth.Thus,this paper constructs a new theoretical framework of hyper-socialization path of customer tacit knowledge acquisition at new product development front-end,and reveals its emergence mechanism for customer tacit knowledge hyper-socialization acquisition by applying system science theory.The hyper-socialization path is combined by both Nonaka's socialization and emerging information and communication technologies.It thus realizes organic integration of “enterprisecustomer-technology-situation”,expands Nonaka's socialization space-time range,enhances Nonaka 's socialization function,and achieves effective customer tacit knowledge acquisition in the same space-time situation,cross-regional situation and combined situation.Fourthly,this paper provides an insight on knowledge system and network analysis of customer tacit knowledge hyper-socialization acquisition.The hyper-socialization acquisition seen as a dynamic system process includes(multiple)knowledge elements,(multiple)people elements and(multiple)media elements.These three types of elements have different knowledge relations inside themselves and among each other,thus three knowledge networks are formed-knowledge sub-network(K-K),people sub-network(P-P)and media sub-network(M-M).It finally constructs a knowledge super-network(KSN)model of customer tacit knowledge acquisition,and uses Ucinet v6.187 and empirical data to carry out instance simulation of sub-networks and knowledge super-network.The knowledge super-network model can identify customer tacit knowledge types,customer membership of corporate R&D team members and media interaction paths.The conceptual model of customer tacit knowledge acquisition influencing factors composed of seven variables of knowledge representation adequacy,knowledge absorption completeness,knowledge complexity,knowledge embeddedness,situation support,organization empowerment and inter-subjective multidimensional interaction is finally constructed along four dimensions of acquisition body,acquisition customer,acquisition approach,and acquisition environment in terms of socialization dependence,process and pattern,path and mechanism,and network model.Then this paper empirically studies the influencing factors through empirical hypothesis,questionnaire design,data collection and SPSS19.0 analysis.The results show that knowledge representation adequacy,knowledge embeddedness,situation support,and organization empowerment had a significant positive impact on inter-subjective multi-dimensional interaction;Inter-subjective multidimensional interaction plays a partial intermediary role between knowledge representation adequacy,knowledge embeddedness,and customer tacit knowledge acquisition,and plays a complete intermediary role between situation support,organization empowerment,and customer tacit knowledge acquisition.Finally,from the perspectives of process and pattern,path way and mechanism,network model,influencing factors,and customer co-creation environment of customer tacit knowledge acquisition,this paper puts forward corresponding strategies to facilitate customer tacit knowledge acquisition of new product development's front-end in customer co-creation environment.