Customers as knowledge partners in a digital business ecosystem: From customer analytics towards knowledge partnerships

Analyzing data of your customers and providing them with the best product or service is no longer sufficient within the digital economy to make your customers satisfied or even enthusiastic about your company in the long run. These days the approach of customer needs analysis seems to be extended towards big data and customer analytics. But is collecting data really helpful, especially for SMEs with limited resources? Research shows that pure data collection does not provide any additional strategic value. In fact, most companies have no clue what to do with the collected big data and how to gain strategic value out of it. In this empirical paper, drawing on the ecosystem theory, we argue that customers should not any longer be seen as pure raw material of data, but as active knowledge partners. This requires a complete mind shift in how SMEs deal with their customers. In this paper, we contribute to the existing literature by providing an interaction framework to show how companies can create a well-functioning knowledge partnership based on the customer's motivational foundations to benefit from different contributions and strategic values customers are willing to make.