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Customer Knowledge Management via Social Media: A Case Study of an Indian Retailer

The socialization process in knowledge management (KM) has been in discussion for more than a decade, and most research has focused on socialization among employees in developing organizational knowledge. But this article tries to explore the socialization aspect in customer knowledge management (CKM) in a customer-centric industry, retail using social media. The case study of a leading Indian retailer is implemented using netnography, a research technique that draws data from computer-mediated communication channels. The communications of the retailer to and from customers through Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare are collected, codified and analysed. The findings explored the customer knowledge gaps (CKG) in the social media interactions, based on which a CKG model was developed. The study gives a new insight for retailers which can be used to evaluate their strategies using customer knowledge from social media apart from customer relationship management (CRM) and personal interactions. The information that customers share via social media is substantial and important for organizations like retailers, and it is high time to appropriately value this customer knowledge as it can be effectively used for enhancing future marketing strategies.