Enabling consumers to self-design unique products that match their idiosyncratic preferences is the key value driver of modern mass customization systems. These systems are increasingly becoming “social,” allowing for consumer-to-consumer interactions such as commenting on each other's self-designed products. The present research examines how receiving others' feedback on initial product configurations affects consumers' ultimate product designs and their satisfaction with these self-designed products. Evidence from a field study in a European car manufacturer's brand community and from two follow-up experiments reveals that receiving feedback from other community members on initial self-designs leads to less unique final self-designs, lower satisfaction with self-designed products, lower product usage frequency, and lower monetary product valuations. We provide evidence that the negative influence of feedback on consumers' satisfaction with self-designed products is mediated by an increase in decision uncertainty and perceived process complexity. The implications of socially enriched mass customization systems for both consumer welfare and seller profitability are discussed.

The current research demonstrates how conversational robo advisors as opposed to static, non-conversational robo advisors alter perceptions of trust, the evaluation of a financial services firm, and consumer financial decision making. We develop and empirically test a novel conceptualization of conversational robo advisors building on prior work in human-to-human communication and interpersonal psychology, showing that conversational robo advisors cause greater levels of affective trust compared to non-conversational robo advisors and evoke a more benevolent evaluation of a financial services firm. We demonstrate that this increase in affective trust not only affects firm perception (in terms of benevolence attributions or a more positively-valenced onboarding experience), but has important implications for investor behavior, such as greater recommendation acceptance and an increase in asset allocation toward conversational robo advisors. These findings have important implications for research on trust formation between humans and machines, the effective design of conversational robo advisors, and public policy in the digital economy.

Customizing a product by choosing each of its attributes individually tends to be onerous for consumers, and the benefits of product customization may thus be offset by an increase in choice complexity. As a remedy for this dilemma, the current research introduces the customization via starting solutions (CvSS) architecture, which substantially reduces the complexity of product customization while preserving all of its advantages. Under CvSS, consumers first select one starting solution from a set of prespecified products, which they then refine to create their final customized product. Evidence from nine studies (three of which were conducted in field settings) across a wide range of product domains (shirts, cars, vacation packages, jewelry, and financial products) shows that the CvSS architecture results in substantial benefits relative to the standard attribute-by-attribute product customization format for both consumers (increased satisfaction with their product choices, reduced choice complexity, and enhanced mental simulation of product use) and firms (purchases of more feature-rich, and thus higher-priced, products).

Automated fabrication, home services, and premade goods pervade the modern consumer landscape. Against this backdrop, this research explores how the emotion of awe might motivate a consumer to partake instead in experiential creation (i.e., activities in which they actively produce an outcome) by enhancing their willingness to learn. Across eight experiments, experiencing awe (vs. happiness, excitement, pride, amusement, or neutrality) increases people’s likelihood of choosing an experiential creation gift (vs. one not involving experiential creation), willingness to pay for experiential creation products (vs. comparable ready-made products), likelihood of creating a bespoke snack (vs. taking a premade one), preference for experiential creation solutions (vs. solutions without experiential creation), likelihood of purchasing a product when it is framed as high (vs. low) in experiential creation, preference for high (vs. low) experiential creation meals, and likelihood of creating a knickknack (vs. taking a premade one). This greater desire for experiential creation is mediated by openness to learning and moderated by the need for closure. These findings, relevant for firms encouraging creation-oriented products and behaviors, offer fresh insights for engaging consumers.