Südwestdeutscher Verlag für Hochschulschriften How to Realize the Potential of Business Customer Communities

In the past the core of business-to-business marketing was to create and transfer information about products and services to customers. Today, as a result of the Internet revolution, this information is becoming commonly available. Due to information transparency, traditional linear marketing and sales approaches - focused on transferring information to customers - are reaching their limits. In his thesis, Dr. Pablo Erat argues that organizations in the business-to-business sector can profit from a customer marketing and service approach that is based on the enabling of customer communities. Based on an in-depth case study, he identifies four major challenge areas and demonstrates how these can be addressed in order to create well functioning communities and improve the sales performance.