Customer knowledge management: state of the art and future research directions

Globalisation and the structural shift towards an information and knowledge society are both driving forces that have modified business structures in the 21st century. Knowledge is gaining importance and traditional production factors are being placed in the background due to the new environmental conditions affecting companies. As a result, both the concept of knowledge management and the strategic direction of the company are receiving increasing attention. Especially customer knowledge (CK) is becoming a steadily growing strategic component in the corporate environment. It is therefore no surprise that customer knowledge management (CKM) as a new theoretical approach was introduced lately. The objective of this paper is to discuss the state of the art of CKM literature and distinguish it from existing management approaches. It was consequently confirmed through a systematic literature review that the CKM approach can be labelled as being independent and dissimilar to other management approaches. Finally, further research directions have been derived as a result of our literature analysis.