Conceptualizing a Schematic Grid View of Customer Knowledge from the Johari Window's Perspective

Abstract Interest on customer knowledge management has been escalating over the past decade with various frameworks and models were suggested to improve organizational profit and performance. Nevertheless, the more fundamental and micro aspect of individual employee-customer interaction is often neglected. This paper proposes that customer knowledge should serve as an individual competency that can be mastered by each sales employee instead of a managerial role that relies heavily on information systems and databases. Employees’ ability to comprehend customer knowledge can be viewed through Luft and Ingham's Johari Window lens. Through a conceptual approach, a two-by-two grid is transpired. It categorizes matter of interests that employees and customers either know or do not know. The Customer Knowledge Transparency Grid (CKTG) has the potential to guide marketers in becoming more aware of customers’ needs and preferences, especially when this knowledge is hidden in the sense that they are tacitly stored in the minds of the customers. Besides, the employee's propensity to be aware, know and make sense of customers’ needs is a part of an individual customer knowledge competency that can be potentially validated in future research.