Individual differences, motivations, and willingness to use a mass customization option for fashion products

Abstract

Mass customization entails the mass production of individually customized goods and services. Co‐design is a mass customization option where a product's design is based on the customer's selections from a range of design feature offerings. A model comprised of relationships between individual differences, motivations for using co‐design, and willingness to use co‐design was proposed and statistically supported using 521 university subjects from different regions of the USA and the analysis of moment structures (AMOS) statistic. As hypothesized, optimum stimulation level (OSL) predicted two clothing interest factors: experimenting with appearance (EA) and enhancement of individuality (EI). As proposed, OSL and EA predicted the two motivations, trying co‐design as an exciting experience and using co‐design to create a unique product, whereas EI only predicted using co‐design to create a unique product. Both motives were mediating variables between individual differences and willingness to use co‐design, but using co‐design to create a unique product had a stronger effect. Theoretical and marketing implications were discussed.

A review and a conceptual framework of the key value drivers of mass customisation

“…The following figure illustrates the conceptual model proposed by Fiore et al (2004). In this model the uniqueness of a product influences customers' willingness to use co-design directly.…”

“…More precisely, the effects of, for example, perceived contribution to the MC process, feelings of accomplishment, or process effort and enjoyment have been investigated, but no comprehensive framework has been established that would account for product characteristics and factors of the MC process at the same time. Fiore et al (2004) suggested in their research on fashion products that the uniqueness of the product should be the primary marketing feature due to their findings that 'creating a unique product' has a stronger effect on customers' willingness to use MC than 'trying co-design as an exciting experience'. However, even within product categories differences between product characteristics influence the relevance of the success factors of MC making the generalisation of success factors difficult.…”

“…1 an increase in preference fit (Franke et al, 2009) 2 a product's uniqueness (Fiore et al, 2004;Lee and Chang, 2011) 3 the enjoyment perceived when customising a product (Fiore et al, 2004; 4 the perception of pride to be the author of a product 5 the feeling of psychological ownership .…”

The factors influencing consumers' perceived complexity of online apparel mass customization service usage

“…Accordingly the initial studies for the mass customization asserted that corporations can provide various and customized products to the consumer by introducing a flexible production system called as mass customization and that they can raise the consumer's benefit perception by allowing the consumer to select its own products (Ansari & Mela, 2003;Fiore, Lee, & Kunz, 2004;Ulrich, AndersonConnell, & Wu, 2003). However, most studies were Vol.…”

Effects of technology adoption on mass customization ability of broad and narrow market firms

“…Those studies provided the foundations for contemporary research having emphasis on applied, implementation-related issues in MC such as assessment of customer preferences (e.g. Liechty et al, 2001;Fiore et al, 2004) and manufacturing suitability to MC (Fogliatto et al, 2003), product characterization (e.g. Chan and Cheung, 2001) and design (McMains, 2005), and the analysis of product commonality (e.g.…”