HANDEL WEWNĘTRZNY 2018;4(375):377-389 (tom I) 377

Przemysław Tomczyk
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego – Warszawa

Knowledge from Customers. Definition and Research Areas

Summary

Customers provide different types of value to a firm. They pay for products or
services, they recommend, share with friends, and provide knowledge. The litera-
ture recognises various value streams customers represent, but knowledge is not
treated as one of them. Knowledge from customers is the knowledge customers
possess that can be used to make marketing decisions. The purpose of this article
is to define knowledge from customer and classify it by finding the most com-
monly studied areas. Based on the two-dimensional analysis, including the type
of offer (product or service) and the characteristics of knowledge from customers
(to know, to use, to create), the results reveal that the mostly explored area is to
create products or services, the attribute examined by 73.2% of the papers. This
implies that the theory of how to create a product or service with a customer
is highly developed. This allows us to focus on the theory of new product/ser-
vice development to extend future research on the segmentation and valuation of
knowledge from customer.
Key words: customer relationship management, customer knowledge, knowledge
from customers.
JEL codes: D83, M31

Introduction

Knowledge from the Customer (KfC) is a part of Customer Knowledge, which consists
of three elements: Knowledge about Customers (KaC), Knowledge for Customers (KfoC)
and Knowledge from Customers (KfC) (Gebert, Geib, Kolbe, & Brenner, 2003). Knowledge
about customers is the knowledge a  firm possesses that can be used for marketing pur-
poses, and is accumulated to understand customers’ motivations and needs and to address
them in a personalized way, e.g. knowledge about customer characteristics and preferences
(Davenport, Harris, & Kohli, 2001). Knowledge for customers is knowledge a firm has
that can be transferred to its customers as an additional value component to satisfy custom-
ers’ knowledge needs, e.g. through customer education (García-Murillo & Annabi, 2002).
Knowledge from customers is knowledge residing in customers which can be valuable for
marketing purposes but is not easily accessible for the firm, e.g. knowledge about how to
use products/services or how to create/modify them. Knowledge from customers becomes
knowledge about customers in terms of their preferences, and then can be treated as part of
this knowledge. The purpose of this article is to define knowledge from customer and clas-
sify it by finding the most commonly studied areas.

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 378 KNOWLEDGE FROM CUSTOMERS. DEFINITION AND RESEARCH AREAS

Theoretical background

Various concepts have been discussed in the literature to describe aspects of KfC from
different theoretical angles, but the differences among those perspectives are not always
clear-cut.

Table 1
Knowledge from customer (KfC) theories
L.p. Theory name Source
1 Prosumerism Toffler, 1980
2 Team-based co-learning (Gibbert, Leibold, & Probst, 2002a)
3 Mutual innovation (E.A. Von Hippel, 1978)
4 Communities of creation and joint IP/ownership (Gibbert et al., 2002a)
5 Communities of creation Sawhney, Prandelli, 2000
6 Innovative users and users’ entrepreneurship (Abrell, Pihlajamaa, Kanto, vom Brocke, &
Uebernickel, 2016)
7 Value co-creation (Vargo, Maglio, & Akaka, 2008)
8 Lead user innovation E. von Hippel, 1986
9 Co-production Etgar, 2008
10 New product development Hoyer, Chandy, Dorotic, Krafft, & Singh, 2010
11 New service development Alam, 2002
12 Crowdsourcing Whitla, 2009
13 Open innovation (Enkel, Gassmann, & Chesbrough, 2009)
14 Collaborative product development (Eslami & Lakemond, 2016)
15 Customer competence (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2000)
Source: own elaboration.

The above theories assume customers’ participation in creating value. Some of these the-
ories focus on value creation for the firm, e.g. new product development or lead user innova-
tion; for others, the applicable theory depends on the context, e.g. crowdsourcing. However,
knowledge derived from the customer is not explicitly expressed; it is mostly implied and
undefined. Although it is widely used, there is no clear overall KfC theory, which could be
a starting point to valuate it and identify its antecedents and consequences.
The KfC range includes two main dimensions (Tomczyk, working paper). The first di-
mension refers to KfC’s objective character, based on the division of goods into products and
services. This allows for the capture of KfC’s contribution in the context of the core business
activity. The second dimension reflects the way in which KfC can be manifested; i.e. as an
ability to know, to use or to create the products or services. Both allow for the capture of
research studies with all the forms of KfC engagement.

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 PRZEMYSŁAW TOMCZYK 379
Table 2
Knowledge from customers (KfC) dimensions framework
Type of offer
Product Service
Type of knowledge
to know Customers know the product Customers know the service
to use Customers are able to use the product Customers are able to use the service
Customers are able to create/modify Customers are able to create/modify
to create/to modify
the product the service
Source: as in Table 1.

To know the offer means that customers know the product or service category; they know
the variety of existing brands, their logos, jingles and claims (Basu & Vitharana, 2009;
Brucks, 1985, Kumar, 2013). To use the offer means customers are able to use the product/
service (Ghosh, Dutta, & Stremersch, 2006; Rao & Monroe, 1988). To create the product or
service means to participate at different levels in the creation or modification of that product
or service (Fang, Palmatier, & Evans, 2008; Fuchs et al., 2011; Joshi & Sharma, 2004).
Knowledge from customers represents a stream of potential value for a firm that can
be considered part of customer engagement value (CEV). CEV includes customer lifetime
value (CLV), customer referral value (CRV) and customer influence value (CIV), whereas
the latter two are usually combined into the concept of customer social value (CSV). While
these three components have been analyzed extensively in research in recent years, customer
knowledge value (CKV) has received no such attention. This entails a need to define KfC
and to identify and analyze its typology to evaluate it in the future.

Methodology

The methodology of the paper is twofold. The first part allows us to identify the KfC
definition, and the second enables us to delve more deeply into related highly explored re-
search areas.
Both were done on the basis of a systematic literature review in which I searched through
electronic databases (EBSCO Business Searching Interface, EMERALD Insight, ProQuest,
ScienceDirect and JSTOR). Search terms used included: customer knowledge, customer
knowledge management or customer knowledge value in the title, abstract and keywords. In
addition, I scanned through the reference lists of the found articles.
I analyzed publication trends over the past 40 years (Tomczyk, working paper). The
research includes 184 papers specifically devoted to KfC and 51 general papers that in-
vestigate customer knowledge management (CKM). The papers were published between
January 1977 and March 2017 and cover the different KfC theories presented above. There
are 16 KfC definition terms out of those 235 papers, which include a definition or descrip-
tion of KfC.

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 380 KNOWLEDGE FROM CUSTOMERS. DEFINITION AND RESEARCH AREAS

To identify the highly explored research areas among different KfC papers, this study
analyzed 137 empirical works. This resulted in the identification of 25 papers, the content
of which was inappropriate; i.e. they did not deal with KfC, despite the fact that they met
the systematic literature review keywords criteria. The balance of papers (112) qualified
for further analysis. All of them met two proposed criteria (type of offer and type of knowl-
edge) and were coded <1;0>, depending on whether the criterion option was present or not
in a multiple-choice dimension, e.g. product – to create or service – to know – to use. This
means that the first paper examines product creation/modification and the second examines
service familiarity and the ability to use it. Two-step cluster analysis allows for the clustering
of nominal variables (Rószkiewicz, 2011), so it was used to classify the papers. This resulted
in clusters that can be presented in a two-dimensional matrix, based on the theoretical frame-
work (see Table 2).

Results

A content analysis shows that two groups of definitions exist. The first (12 out of 16
papers) refers to knowledge from the customer as a general knowledge customers possess
without defining knowledge itself (definitions 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 13, 16). The sec-
ond group (four out of 16 papers) defines knowledge as “information”, “thoughts”, “ideas”
or “needs pattern” (2, 12, 14, 15). Both types seem insufficient, since the first group of
definitions does not deal with knowledge itself, while the second group identifies “knowl-
edge” with “information”, when the latter is the earlier stage of the former (Ackoff, 1989)
or “thoughts”, “ideas” or “needs patterns”, which are ways of expressing knowledge or the
result of its use (Garcia-Murillo & Annabi, 2002).
Knowledge possessed by customers refers to two elements that need to be defined –
knowledge itself and its contribution. Based on the highly-cited, classic knowledge man-
agement work by Davenport and Prusak1, “knowledge is a fluid mix of framed experience,
values, contextual information, and expert insight that provides a framework for evaluat-
ing and incorporating new experiences and information” (Davenport & Prusak, 1998). So,
knowledge here is defined by the prism of experience, information and context, which con-
stitute its meaning. Since knowledge from customers exists within customers, it could be
stated that knowledge from customers is a fluid mix of framed experience, values, contextual
information and expert insight. Knowledge exists within people and is a mixture of vari-
ous elements, so it is difficult to operationalize. “To have knowledge” means “to know”, so
knowledge from customers is all that customer knows and what can be extracted in different
forms.
KfC manifests in various forms. The well-established classification includes knowledge
of facts (know-what), skills (know-how) and causal relationships (know-why) (Garud, 1997),

  21089 according to Google Scholar, 27.10.2017, which gives the work second place in GS ranking after I. Nonaka and
1

H. Takeuchi (1995) The knowledge-creating company: How Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation, Oxford
University Press, Oxford (40,127 according to Google Scholar, 27.10.2017).

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 PRZEMYSŁAW TOMCZYK 381
supplemented by knowledge of people (know-who) and opinions (know-like), which en-
riches the typology by the elements of people’s relationships and evaluation of the facts. The
latter allows for the inclusion of the element of the customer’s experience by presenting the
customer’s reflections on what he/she actually knows. This reflection, expressed in personal
feelings, offers experience, the context of consumption, often plays a significant role in the
modification of offers (Dobiegała-Korona, 2010).
The second part of the definition refers to the contribution of that knowledge. Desouza
and Awazu state that KfC “(…) helps the firm to improve its products/services or design
new products/services to better address customers” (Desouza & Awazu, 2005). It is easy to
imagine that KfC contributes to the improvement of products/services to increase value for
a firm. A overall definition of KfC would be:

Knowledge derived from customers is identifiable customer knowledge of facts

(know-what) or skills (know-how) or causal relationships (know-why) or people
(know-who) or opinions (know-like), which facilitates management decision making

This definition, which is more operational than the one by Davenport and Prusak, covers
all the possible areas in which knowledge occurs (see Appendix 1). Identifiable means it can
be obtained through observation, interviews or experiment. If knowledge is not observable,
then it cannot be proved; therefore, from the scientific point of view, it does not exist. A firm
can identify knowledge in one or more of the above activities. The non-exclusive disjunc-
tion allows for the inclusion of all possible knowledge forms or limits the analysis to one.
Decision making requirements determine the purpose of extracting knowledge to enhance
value for a firm, which is consistent with the customer value theory standing behind the CEV
concept (Kumar et al., 2010).
A  two-step cluster analysis with silhouette measure of cohesion and separation > 0.5
identified three clusters of articles which reflect the most exploited research fields in the
KfC domain.
The analysis revealed three clusters, where uses is the predictor that differentiates clus-
ters to the highest extent, and “product” to the lowest. The first and largest cluster (47.3%
of the papers) explores the product-creation field, where KfC supports the product-creation
process and all the observations are create and product ones. The cluster purity (100% for
both) and its share in the population indicate that the area of the product-creating process
supported by customers has covered the biggest part of KfC research for 40 years. This re-
flects the popularity of the concept of new product development, which focuses on custom-
ers’ knowledge sharing in the promotion of new product development.
The second cluster (26.8%) includes articles where KfC concerns the use of products.
It is not as explicitly identified as the first one (93,3% of the whole are use papers, and 70%
are product ones) and reflects a research domain that is supported by prosumerism and value
co-creation theory. The knowledge allows customers to use the product but does not provide
new ideas for the firm.

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 382 KNOWLEDGE FROM CUSTOMERS. DEFINITION AND RESEARCH AREAS

Table 3
Two-step cluster analysis results


Source: as in Table 1.

The third cluster (25.9%) explores the service-creation field, where KfC supports the
service-creation process. Its size is similar to the second one, but is theoretically much closer
to the first. It reflects the new service development concept and is clearly extracted (100% of
papers for both service and create).

Table 4
Knowledge from customer typology
Dimensions Product Service
to know Not identified with silhouette > 0.5 Not identified with silhouette > 0.5
to use Product usage (26,8%; 30) Not identified with silhouette > 0.5
to create/to modify Product creation (47,3%; 53) Service creation (25,9%; 29)
Source: as in Table 1.

The results show that 73,2% of all KfC empirical papers concern new idea creation or the
modification of current ideas. This means researchers focus on the creative aspect of KfC
that contributes new ideas and supports the supply side of the market. I can call this approach
classic. The demand side represents the uses-product dimension, which, consequently, rep-
resents the non-classic approach, which concentrates on knowledge that does not refer to the
creation of new ideas.

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 PRZEMYSŁAW TOMCZYK 383

Conclusions and future recommendations

The aim of the article was to define and classify knowledge from customers. The analysis
shows that the current definitions of KfC are not sufficient, and the literature does not cover
all KfC dimensions. The newly created definition covers all the KfC aspects and is consist-
ent with knowledge management theory. Three identified research areas indicate the direc-
tion for future research. This does not mean that other research fields relating to knowing
a product or a service do not exist. Rather, this means that these three identified clusters have
strong enough theory to proceed with further research.
It is easy to observe that two criteria are not the only ones used to describe the KfC phe-
nomenon. The literature shows that many different KfC-related categories can be used, such
as tacit and explicit knowledge, social and individual, subjective and objective etc. The next
step could be to deepen the above segmentation using additional criteria that allow for the
operationalization of different KfC types such as to use – service – tacit or to create – prod-
uct – explicit through a literature analysis and/or exploratory research.
Secondly, it would be interesting to identify a relationship between KfC dimensions and
CLV determinants such as revenues derived from customer or customer cost. Observing
whether a particular dimension of KfC affects the determinants would be a significant con-
tribution to KfC theory.
Thirdly, KfC valuation could open a new CEV area. A multiple case study chosen on the
basis of in-depth KfC segmentation could break through the wall of KfC value absence in
the literature and ambiguity in business practice. This could create different CKV models for
different KfC dimensions.
Finally, the above findings could help with CKV and CLV, CIV and CRV relationship
identification. Additionally, there could be a need to create scales to operationalize CKV in
terms of rough data inaccessibility.

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 Załącznik 1 386
Knowledge from customer definition Source
1 is the knowledge the customers have about products, suppliers and markets. Aghamirian, Dorri, & Aghamirian, 2015,

handel_wew_4-1-2018.indd 386
p. 65
2 Knowledge from customers to understand customers’ usage patterns or consumption experiences of Chen & Su, 2006, p. 592
products or services.
3 Knowledge from customers is knowledge that can be extracted from customers through interaction to Daghfous, Ashill, & Rod, 2013, p.242
highlight their buying needs and preferences.
4 (…) the knowledge that the customer has about issues related to the product or services he is interested Garcia-Murillo & Annabi, 2002, p. 876
in buying.
5 Knowledge from customers is customers’ knowledge of products, suppliers and markets. Through Gebert, Geib, Kolbe, & Brenner, 2003,
interactions with customers, this knowledge can be gathered to sustain continuous improvement, e.g. p. 109 in: (Garcia-Murillo & Annabi,
service improvements or new product development. 2002, p. 878).
6 (…) knowledge residing in customers. In other words, smart companies realize corporate customers Gibbert, Leibold, & Probst, 2002, p. 461
are more knowledgeable than one might think, and consequently seek knowledge through direct
interaction with customers, in addition to seeking knowledge about customers from their sales
representatives.
7 Knowledge from customers is customers’ knowledge of the firm’s products and the market surrounding. Hamzah, Othman, Hassan, Razak, &
Yunus, 2016, p. 472.
8 Knowledge from customers is knowledge obtained from interactions with customers regarding Khankaew, Ussahawanitichakit, &
products, markets and suppliers. Raksong, 2015, p. 6
9 Knowledge from customers, which is the knowledge customers possess that organizations can obtain Khodakarami & Chan, 2014, p. 27.
by interacting with them.
10 is customers’ knowledge of products, suppliers and markets. Knowledge possessed by customers Peng, Lawrence, & Koo, 2009, p. 146.
about product ranges, such as compatibility between computer hardware components, and about the
wider context and marketplace into which products and services are delivered.
11 Knowledge possessed by customers about product ranges, such as compatibility between computer Rowley, 2002, p. 501.
hardware components or the efficacy of specific drugs in treating complaints, and about a  wider
KNOWLEDGE FROM CUSTOMERS. DEFINITION AND RESEARCH AREAS

context and marketplace into which products and services are delivered
12 Knowledge ‘from’ customers understands customers’ needs patterns and/or consumption experiences Su, Chen, & Sha, 2006, p. 786.
of products and/or services.

13.08.2018 12:25:00
 13 By acquiring, sharing, transferring and utilizing information, knowledge and ideas related to Taherparvar et al., 2014, p. 593
customers, CKM effectively manages knowledge from the customers’ perspective and provides
important sources for novel ideas.
14 Knowledge from customers is customers’ information about products, competitors and markets which Garcia-Murillo and Annabi, 2002

handel_wew_4-1-2018.indd 387
is acquired from customers to understand the external environment.
15 Knowledge from customers refers to the knowledge feedback or contributed by customers (e.g., the Desouza & Awazu, 2005 Wu, Guo, &
ideas, thoughts, and information a  firm receives from its customers regarding their preferences, Shi, 2013, p. 360-361
creativity or consumption experience of specific products or services), which helps the firm to improve
its products/services or design new products/services to better address customers’ needs.
16 Knowledge from customers is a  kind of knowledge (also data or information that which can be Zanjani, Rouzbehani, & Dabbagh, 2008,
analyzed, interpreted and eventually converted to knowledge) that the company attains in order to p. 52
enhance its products and services.
source: own elaboration.
PRZEMYSŁAW TOMCZYK
387

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 388 KNOWLEDGE FROM CUSTOMERS. DEFINITION AND RESEARCH AREAS

Wiedza od klientów. Definicja i obszary badawcze

Streszczenie

Klienci dostarczają firmie różnych wartości. Płacą za produkty lub usługi, reko-
mendują ofertę, dzielą się nią z przyjaciółmi i dostarczają firmie wiedzę. W litera-
turze rozpoznane są różne strumienie wartości dostarczanych przez klientów, lecz
wiedza nie jest traktowana jako jeden z nich. Wiedza od klientów to wiedza, którą
posiadają klienci; to wiedza, dzięki której można podejmować decyzje marketin-
gowe. Celem niniejszego artykułu jest zdefiniowanie wiedzy od klienta i sklasyfi-
kowanie jej przez identyfikację jej najczęściej badanych obszarów. Wyniki analizy
dwuwymiarowej, obejmującej rodzaj oferty (produkt lub usługę) oraz charaktery-
stykę wiedzy od klientów (to know, to use, to create) wskazują, że najczęściej bada-
nym obszarem jest to create, czyli tworzenie produktów lub usług. Obszarowi temu
poświęcono 73,2% artykułów. Oznacza to, że teoria dotycząca tworzenia produktu
lub usługi wspólnie z  klientem, jest stosunkowo dobrze rozwinięta. To pozwala
sprecyzować obszar przyszłych badań nad segmentacją i wyceną wiedzy od klienta.

Słowa kluczowe: zarządzanie relacjami z  klientami, wiedza klienta, wiedza od

klientów.

Kody JEL: M31, D83

Знания, поступающие от клиентов. Дефиниция и сферы изучения

Резюме

Клиенты предоставляют фирме разные ценности. Они платят за продукты

или услуги, рекомендуют предложение, сообщают его друзьям и поставляют
фирме знания. В литературе изучили разные потоки ценностей, поставляемых
клиентами, но знания не считаются одним из них. Знания, поступающие от
клиентов, – это знания, которыми обладают клиенты, это знания, благодаря
которым можно принимать маркетинговые решения. Цель статьи – опреде-
лить знания, поступающие от клиента, и провести классификацию их путем
выявления чаще всего изучаемых областей знаний. Результаты двухмерного
анализа, охватывающего собой вид предложения (продукт или услугу), а так-
же характеристику знаний клиентов (по принципу: знать, использовать, сози-
дать), указывают, что чаще всего изучаемой областью является созидать, т.е.
создание продуктов или услуг. Этой области отвели 73,2% статей. Это обозна-
чает, что теория, касающаяся создания продукта или услуги совместно с кли-
ентом, относительно хорошо развита. Это позволяет уточнить круг будущего
изучения сегментации и оценки знаний, поступающих от клиента.

Ключевые слова: система управления взаимоотношениями с клиентами; зна-

ния клиента; знания, поступающие от клиентов.

Коды JEL: M31, D83

handel_wew_4-1-2018.indd 388 13.08.2018 12:25:00

 PRZEMYSŁAW TOMCZYK 389
Artykuł zaakceptowany do druku w kwietniu 2018 roku

Afiliacja:
dr Przemysław Tomczyk
Akademia Leona Koźmińskiego
Kolegium Zarządzania i Finansów
Katedra Marketingu
ul. Jagiellońska 57/59
03-301 Warszawa
e-mail: ptomczyk@kozminski.edu.pl

handel_wew_4-1-2018.indd 389 13.08.2018 12:25:00