Knowledge management in high-tech products and customer satisfaction : the smartphone industry

Knowledge management for high-tech products, based on innovative product architectures and components, is a critical issue for market satisfaction. Scientific research has widely investigated the competitive advantage that product knowledge owned by Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs) has on product innovation. Nonetheless, the linkage between OEMs' accumulated knowledge on single modules and customer satisfaction is less explored. The article aims at identifying what level of knowledge OEMs should have on both the single modules and the whole product architecture to achieve better customer satisfaction. The research method uses text mining techniques on patent documents to detect associations of modules and product knowledge with patented technologies. Regression analyses are thereafter performed to test the linkage of such a knowledge with customer satisfaction using SPSS. The explorative analysis of the smartphone industry demonstrates that an effect on the final market is found for specific modules, such as application processor, camera and touchscreen controller.