Relational marketing in knowledge-intensive business services: an analysis of the computer services sector

Ettore Bolisani, Alberto Donò and Enrico Scarso

Knowledge Management Research & Practice, 2016, vol. 14, issue 3, 319-328

Abstract: This paper addresses the marketing approaches adopted by Knowledge-Intensive Business Services (KIBS) companies, whose main production factor and outcome is knowledge. Given the key role that client-provider cognitive interactions play in the provision of such services, the study adopts the conceptual framework of Service-Dominant (S-D) logic, that the recent literature considers being fully in line with the core characteristics of KIBS companies. Starting from the assumption that service is the fundamental basis of any economic exchange, this logic suggests a shift from the traditional ‘market to’ approach, which has been developed for tangible goods, to a ‘market with’ approach, where customers and providers collaborate along the whole marketing process. The research was carried out by means of a multiple case study of 20 small computer services companies in Italy, and aimed to understand if (and to what extent) the marketing initiatives of such companies are consistent with the S-D logic, and to discuss the major challenges that they have to face in order to follow the new logic.

Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1057/kmrp.2014.35 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:taf:tkmrxx:v:14:y:2016:i:3:p:319-328

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/tkmr20

DOI: 10.1057/kmrp.2014.35

Access Statistics for this article

Knowledge Management Research & Practice is currently edited by Giovanni Schiuma

More articles in Knowledge Management Research & Practice from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().