Customer knowledge

Customer knowledge (CK) is the combination of experience, value and insight information which is needed, created and absorbed during the transaction and exchange between the customers and enterprise.Campbell (2003) defines customer knowledge as: 'organized and structured information about the customer as a result of systematic processing'. According to Mitussis et al. (2006), customer knowledge is identified as one of the more complex types of knowledge, since customer knowledge can be captured from different sources and channels. Customer knowledge (CK) is the combination of experience, value and insight information which is needed, created and absorbed during the transaction and exchange between the customers and enterprise.Campbell (2003) defines customer knowledge as: 'organized and structured information about the customer as a result of systematic processing'. According to Mitussis et al. (2006), customer knowledge is identified as one of the more complex types of knowledge, since customer knowledge can be captured from different sources and channels. Various classifications exist:Gebert et al. (2002), classified customer knowledge from an organization's perspective into three types: The same categorization of customer knowledge has been made by others such as Bueren et al. (2005) and Feng and Tian (2005). In another categorization, Crié and Micheaux (2006) divide customer knowledge into two types, namely: 'Behavioural' (or Quantitative) and 'Attitudinal' (or Qualitative). Behavioral knowledge is easy to acquire and is basically quantitative by nature; that is, containing a customer transactional relations with the company. On the other hand, attitudinal knowledge is difficult to acquire because it deals with a customer's state of mind; but meanwhile it is an important factor for enhancement of customer knowledge because they are directly related to a customer's thoughts and insights.