Customer Integration

General Description:

Customer Integration can be seen as a Concept of Service Production. The basis for this concept is formed by the idea of a two-stage value creation process. On the first level of value creation, the manufacturer first combines internal production factors and builds potential autonomously (Kleinaltenkamp / Haase 2000). The second step uses this potential and produces, from the customer’s point of view, output. However, this cannot take place without the integration of external factors. According to Kleinaltenkamp (1997), external factors are the customer – as an individual – and the customer’s needs information. Additional external factors can be a customer’s (physical) resources necessary for processing needs information like, for example, materials or software or a computer and Internet access. An external factor is temporarily available to the producer, who combines it with the internal production factors of the production process (Engelhardt / Kleinaltenkamp / Reckenfelderbäumer 1993).

This principle of customer integration is not only valid for “genuine” services, but is the rule especially within the context of full-service solution providing as found in the capital goods industry (Engelhardt / Freiling 1995; Fließ 2001; Jacob 2003; Kleinaltenkamp / Marra 1995). Customized solutions are mostly in demand within the capital goods industry. These solutions almost always have material as well as service components. In other words, customized solutions generally offer products embedded in services. Therefore, attempting to separate the product from the service and vice versa would not make sense (Normann / Ramirez 1993). Customers are integrated into value creation processes to generate a customized product or service whenever standardized goods and services available on the market are no longer sufficient (in this sense, every type of service is an individual product). (Reichwald, Piller 2009)

References:

Engelhardt, Freiling 1995 Die integrative Gestaltung von Leistungspotentialen. Zeitschrift für betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung (zfbf), 47 (1995) 10: 899-91

Engelhardt, Kleinaltenkamp, Reckenfelderbäumer 1993 Leistungsbündel als Absatzobjekte: Ein Ansatz zur Überwindung der Dichotomie von Sach- und Dienstleistungen. Zeitschrift für betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung (zfbf), 45 (1993) 5: 395-426.

Fließ 2001 Die Steuerung von Kundenintegrationsprozessen: Effizienz in Dienstleistungsunternehmen. Wiesbaden: Gabler 2001.

Jacob 2003 Kundenintegrations-Kompetenz: Konzeptionalisierung, Operationalisierung und Erfolgswirkung. Marketing-Zeitschrift für Forschung und Praxis, 25 (2003) 2: 83-98.

Kleinaltenkamp 1997 Integrativität als Kern einer umfassenden Leistungslehre. In: Klaus Backhaus et al. (Hg.): Marktleistung und Wettbewerb, Wiesbaden: Gabler 1997: 83-114.

Kleinaltenkamp, Haase 2000 Externe Faktoren in der Theorie der Unternehmung. In: Horst Albach et al. (Hg.): Die Theorie der Unternehmung in Forschung und Praxis, Berlin / Heidelberg: Springer 2000: 167-194.

Kleinaltenkamp, Marra 1995 Institutionenökonomische Analyse der ‘Customer Integration. Zeitschrift für betriebswirtschaftliche Forschung (zfbf), 47 (1995), Sonderheft 35: 101-117.

Reichwald, Piller 2009 Interaktive Wertschöpfung. Wiesbaden: Gabler 2009