Mass customization of wood furniture: Literature review and application potential

Imported furniture is increasingly threatening the US furniture industry.. Mass customization (MC) may be a strategy for US manufacturers to keep a competitive edge. This paper introduces a MC concept and uses four furniture industry sub sectors (wood household furniture, wood office furniture, upholstery furniture, and wood kitchen cabinets) to indicate a possible correlation between the level of customization offered by each of these four industry sub-sectors and their success in maintaining domestic market share. Observations indicate that the U.S. kitchen cabinet industry offers the highest level of MC of all furniture sub-sectors analyzed. The domestic kitchen cabinet industry is not loosing market share to offshore imports. The wood household furniture industry sub-sector, on the other hand, offers little or no customization for consumers and suffers large market share losses from imported products. The study supports the notion that MC can strengthen the domestic furniture industry's competitive position relative to offshore producers.