Mass customizers often sell personalized products through online sales configurators, also known as mass-customization toolkits. Recently, a number of mass customizers have connected their sales configurators with social software applications. This is not surprising, as social software enables an interactive and socially rich shopping experience, which makes shopping with a mass-customization toolkit more similar to retail shopping. However, research on the use of social software by mass customizers is very limited: almost all previous studies on mass-customization toolkits have focused on the dyadic interaction between a sales configurator and an isolated, potential customer. Based on an analysis of 277 real online sales configurators, the present paper identifies eight different ways in which online sales configurators can connect with social software. These different connection modalities are compared both in terms of enabled social interactions and in terms of support provided for the sales configuration task. The paper also shows that, in the analyzed sample, the level of adoption varies substantially across the different modalities and, for the same modality, across industries. A number of opportunities for future research on these sales configurator-social software connection modalities are finally outlined
Purpose The purpose of this paper is to focus on online sales configurators (SCs), also known as mass-customization toolkits, which enable consumers to self-customize their product solutions online. The paper aims to provide new insights into which characteristics of an online SC increase the consumer-perceived benefits of possessing a mass-customized product. Design/methodology/approach Previous studies on mass customization (MC), sales configuration, and learning psychology are used to develop the research hypotheses, which are tested by analyzing data from 675 configuration experiences from a convenience sample of potential consumers using 31 real online SCs for laptops/notebooks, economy cars, and sport shoes/sneakers. Findings The paper finds support for the hypotheses that SCs with higher flexible-navigation, focused-navigation, and easy-comparison capabilities enhance not only the traditionally considered utilitarian benefit (UT), but also the consumer-perceived uniqueness benefit (UN) and self-expressiveness (SE) benefit (SE). Furthermore, consistent with the study’s hypotheses, SCs with higher benefit-cost communication and user-friendly product-space description capabilities are found to improve UT. The hypotheses that these two capabilities enhance UN and SE, however, are not supported. Post-hoc analyses suggest that the examined SCs are generally UT-centered and need improvement of their ability to communicate the UN and the SE a consumer could derive from the purchase of his/her configured product. Originality/value While prior research has primarily been concerned with conceptually arguing and empirically showing that uniqueness and self-expressiveness are two additional sources of consumer value in business-to-consumer MC, this is the first empirical study that offers insights into which characteristics online SCs should have in order to draw from these two value sources.
The growing adoption of social web technologies such as social software (SSW) in online configuration environments has enabled the possibility of supporting configurator users in interacting digitally with real people while they are shopping for customized products. Previous research has identified that online sales configurators (OSCs) are currently connected to SSW with different modalities to provide configurator users with a variety of options to digitally interact with real people. Enriching the configuration environment with social-interaction tools has engendered the phenomenon of socialproduct customization. Recent studies considered the social product-customization by investigating the impact that community feedback and social comparisons has on configurator user. However, the OSCs users' need to interact with different referents during their configuration process, and whether the SSW-OSCs connections respond to this need are still unsearched. To address this gap, the present study explores (a) whether users experience the need to interact with different referents while shopping via OSCs and (b) which interaction modalities users are looking for. By considering 943 configuration experiences from 189 users of 378 OSCs for various consumer goods, the present study finds that the need for social interaction by OSC users is highly relevant. Moreover, OSC users perceive the need to interact with different referents during different stages of the configuration process, and, depending on the referent with whom they wish to interact, they are interested in different interaction modalities in terms of how and where those interactions take place. These findings imply that mass customizers may leverage their customers' need to interact with real people while shopping online via OSCs in order to better engage their actual and potential customers.
The paper presents the results of an exploratory investigation on the approaches to e-commerce strategies by firms in the agrifood sector, with a focus on Italian small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The article tries to assess the fit between online sales configurators (OSCs) that enable product customization and the habits of Italian online buyers. The study elaborates the empirical results of two data collection efforts: (i) the first effort is to collect data on the food configurators' capabilities deployed by a sample of 105 active OSCs and (ii) the second effort is to collect data on the characteristics of the e-commerce websites from a sample of 522 Italian SMEs. Matching the results of the two analyses with existing literature on Italian customers' requirements while shopping for food online, the study provides insights on the opportunities offered by mass-customization delivered via OSCs to food SMEs, especially in terms of customer experience (CE) innovation.
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