Consumer Decision Making Process in Mass Customization

Product configuration has been recognized as a key enabler for Mass Customization; allowing customers to choose their products based on choice of product attributes. It is significantly different from the traditional process, commonly called product selection process that focuses on the choice of product alternatives. This paper reports an experimental investigation of differences between product configuration and product selection in terms of consumers’ behavior and their satisfaction regarding the results and processes. The results show that product configuration offers customers greater satisfaction in both products and processes. Factors such as choice representation, shopping method and number of products offered have also been studied and reported in this paper.

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