Customer-Centric Knowledge Management: Concepts and Applications

Introduction
The importance of customers for business firms has created tough ‘rivalries’ among competitors over acquiring new customers or retaining/expanding relationship with current ones. In particular, customer knowledge has been utilized as a key strategic resource and distinctive core competency to gain sustainable competitive advantage following the transformation of organizations from ‘product-centric’ to ‘customer-centric’ ones. The advancements in electronic and web-enabled systems coupled with accelerations in globalization, competitive environments, and changing customer’s preferences have created new challenges as well as opportunities for leveraging customer knowledge (CK) competencies.

Objectives
Customer-Centric Knowledge Management (CCKM) is needed in order to build good customer relations, continue to serve each customer in his or her preferred way, and to maintain customer satisfaction and loyalty. It includes the management of processes and techniques used to collect information regarding customers' needs, wants, and expectations for the development of new and/or improved products/services.

This book intends to address managerial and technical aspects of customer-centric knowledge implementation. It seeks to expand the literature and business practices and to create a very significant academic value to the dynamic and emerging fields of organizational knowledge management, customer relationship management, and information and communication technologies (ICTs).

Target Audience
This book seeks to offer audiences of business/IT academics and practitioners a refreshed and an enhanced view of research ideas in customer knowledge management.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

Customer Knowledge

• Generation
• Sharing
• Implementation

Customer–Centric Knowledge Management
Strategic Analysis

• Design and Development
• The Role of People
• The Role of Technologies
• The role of Processes
• Delivery Channels
• Supply Chains
• Organizational Learning
• Organizational Change
• Communities of Practice/Creation
• Performance Metrics
• Project Management
• e-Commerce
• e-Governmental

Submission Procedure
Academics, researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 15, 2010, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified on or before March 30, 2010 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by June 30, 2010. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. Contributors may also be requested to serve as reviewers for this project.

Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference” and “IGI Publishing” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com. This publication is anticipated to be released in 2011.

Important Dates
March 15, 2010: Proposal Submission Deadline
March 30, 2010: Notification of Acceptance
June 30, 2010: Full Chapter Submission
September 30, 2010: Review Results to Authors
October 30, 2010: Revised Chapter Submission
November 15, 2010: Final Acceptance Notifications

Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by mail to:

Prof. Minwir Al-Shammari
Director, Graduate Studies Program
College of Business Administration
University of Bahrain
P.O Box 32038, Sakhir
Kingdom of Bahrain

Fax: (+973) 17-449-776
Email: minwir@yahoo.com