Marketing Knowledge Management in Structural Approach. Community of Practice in Microsoft - International Comparison

The idea of knowledge management, marketing knowledge management and knowledge transfer occurred as a consequence of the process of transformation of traditional business relations into collaboration of industry, services and their partners, due to the fact that information has become a production resource, especially in net-product sectors (for example IT sector). The intellectual value (information, knowledge) is created by enterprises, their co-competitors (co-operators, competitors) and customers to satisfy target markets. Global, innovative firms have been using new tools to create relations based on knowledge-changing, because global customers are more exacting and they take decisions more knowingly. The client knowledge communities constitute an integral subsystem of the business network structures - the marketing knowledge subnet. Observing the activity of IT leaders and their customers in community of practice we can state, that they are more and more involved. Also the opinions of the IT leaders and the figures show that this tool of knowledge management is successfully used in global markets. The method used in this research is an in-depth case study analysis. This consists in a comprehensive presentation of a real situation occurring in a particular company or with regard to one of the functions realized within the company, which is treated as an individual case. Internet resources, particularly the websites of selected subjects, have been identified and critically analysed. Detailed, continuous observation of the Internet sources has been applied since 2000. The paper will contain the example of practices in marketing knowledge management of IT-leader (Microsoft) in community of practice area in global market in international comparison.