| Summary: | 碩士 === 元智大學 === 經營管理碩士班(國際企業學程) === 102 === Abstract
We are currently witnessing a transformation of the business environment from product-centric to customer-centric. Companies are now seeking to gain competitive advantage from the knowledge of customers about the company’s products and services. Only few service companies of today value the knowledge of their customers. This is something that needs to be addressed because with the passing of time, customers trends and preferences also changes. If service companies digest the fact that they exist solely for their customers, then they would value their inputs thereby squeeze out opinions towards the services and products offered by the company. But before gaining this knowledge from customers, the platform for its creation must be visible and noticed. In other words, service companies should create room for customer knowledge, a platform where they can interact with their customers.
With that being stated, this study therefore investigates and develops a customer knowledge creation model using part of Nonaka’s concept of Ba (place) together with other supporting literatures. The model was further compared across two cultures (Gambia &; Taiwan) to investigate if cultural differences will impact on the model fit. The results of the Gambian study showed that customer knowledge can actually be created by adopting the concept of Ba. This means that individual face to face knowledge sharing, group face to face knowledge sharing &; virtual knowledge sharing are 3(three) Ba’s thus leading to customer knowledge creation and hence proved to be the platforms through which customer knowledge can be created. Though great model fit was achieved for Gambia but not for Taiwan. This further proved our research hypothesis that the structural models between these two countries are significantly different thereby highlighting culture differences and questioning standardization strategy. This model can be beneficial to any company that depends on customers to increase sales and survive in the competitive market of today.
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