How to Know Your Customers? Towards a Novel Framework for Online Customer Knowledge Absorptive Capacity

The advent of new technological schannels, such as social media, mobile applications, and AI chatbots, has fundamentally positioned absorbing online customer knowledge as a key priority for marketing managers. Despite its importance, online customer knowledge absorptive capacity (KAC) remains underexplored in academic research. This study aims to address this gap by developing a comprehensive framework for KAC and offering actionable, strategic insights to help organizations better absorb and utilize customer knowledge. A mixed-method approach was used, starting with a literature review and expert interviews, followed by the Best–Worst Method (BWM) to rank the criteria of the framework. A case study was conducted to evaluate the framework’s real-world applicability. The proposed framework includes three main categories: organizational context, processes, and customer knowledge content. The organizational context involves strategic, structural, and human factors, while the processes cover acquisition, assimilation, transformation, and exploitation. Customer knowledge content is divided into two dimensions: knowledge about the customer and knowledge from the customer. Among these, organizational context was ranked the highest priority. This research provides valuable insights for organizations, identifying strengths and weaknesses in their KAC and offering strategies to enhance their online knowledge acquisition. In the context of digital transformation, absorbing online customer knowledge has emerged as an essential requirement for businesses. However, research on the multifaceted development of KAC for online customers has been limited. This study contributes an innovative framework to fill this theoretical gap, integrating various aspects of online customer KAC that have been overlooked in previous research.