How To Achieve A Successful Mass-Customization Strategy?

With the advent of new technology, the life circle of technology and product has. been shorten; and with the improvement of the condition of people life and production volume, the desire for product variety and unique feature of consumer has been kept rising. The mass production model once overwhelmingly popular in industrial times can hardly sustain the competitive advantage for companies. It is of necessity for company fighting for its market status to design and manufacture products fit for the customers' needs more quickly and precisely. And just like Davis mentioned in his book "Future Perfect", those companies implementing customization on a mass-base are now gaining more competitive advantage. "Mass Customization" can band the superiority offered by Mass production and Customization together, customization is no longer the privilege of the rich, and all the consumers could get the customized product fir for their preference at a reasonable price. Therefore, the Mass Customization Strategy has received great attention from both academician and practitioners.The extant literatures have done some significant work in the field of Mass Customization research, which provides direction for the operation of corporation as well as lays a sound foundation for future research. By the review of extant literatures, we could find that the industrial research perspective has put great effort into how to implement customization strategy strategically and technologically, thus neglecting the consumers'role in customization, while the research from consumer perspective pay more attention to the perception of consumer instead of specific customization.On the basis of past research, this research has put the product feature element and consumer element into a single analysis frame and explores the interaction effect of customization task and consumer knowledge on the psychological consequences of consumers'participating in customization. This paper also put brand credibility into the analysis frame. By using the result of emotion research, we explore how customization impact the consumers'buying intention. Through 2 experiments, our research finds that, customization task type and consumer knowledge both affect the emotion experience, perceived fit and psychological ownership; and while deciding whether to buy the customized product, consumers judgment will also be influenced by brand credibility.This paper comprises 3 parts of introduction, theory development and empirical analysis. The introduction part includes the 1st chapter which mainly clarifying the background and significance of this research as well as the research topic and framework. Theory development comprises the 2nd, the 3rd and 4th chapter, we bring forward an integrated analysis framework comprising both customization task and consumer knowledge on reviewing the extant literature on mass customization, experience and emotion, and we further analysis by adding brand credibility into the analysis framework. Chapter 5 and 6 consist of the empirical analysis, we verify our hypotheses through 2 experiments and discuss the results and management suggestions, and we also point out the limit in our research and make some suggestions to future research.The outline of each chapter is as follow:Chapter One has pointed out the background and significance of the research. The need mode of people is now under alteration, with the need changing from simple farm products to experience products; the standard of choosing product is far beyond product function, the emotional and social element will influence people's judgment and decision. This research puts forward an integrated framework including consumer factor and customization factor verified through empirical research.Chapter Two has done a literature review of extant literature on mass customization from corporation perspective and consumer perspective. We make an introduction of mass customization and how it is viewed from corporation perspective and consumer perspective. On the basis of extant research, we put forward an integrated framework which may allow us to better understand the effect of customization task and consumer knowledge having on participation in customization.Chapter Three makes a review of research on experience and emotion. Emotion itself is some kind of experience, and it could impact the product attitude. Hence, knowing the emotion elicited by the feature customizing and how consumer will use the emotion clue to assist their purchasing decisions is extremely important for the mass customization strategy.Chapter Four puts forward the research framework, research design and procedure, and it explains the hypotheses. We identify two types of customization as function customization and form customization on the basis of research on utilitarian features and hedonic features. We split the consumer into tow categories as expert and average consumer by consumer knowledge. We introduce brand credibility into the analysis and through the manipulation we have primed the concern about the quality by consumer. At last, we have verified our hypotheses through tow experiments.Chapter Five is research one. Research one has checked the effect of customization type and consumer knowledge have on emotional and other psychological consequences. The research finds out that different customization type and consumer knowledge would have a significant impact on emotional and other psychological consequences.Chapter Six is research two. Research two has checked the effect of customization on consumer emotion and psychology again and further explored its impact on the buying intention. The result shows that brand credibility would have an impact on the buying intention for customized product.Chapter Seven has discussed the research results. According to our research, we suggest that corporation should arrange the proper content of customization for different consumers. To the ordinary consumer, it is a good strategy of letting them customize the product form rather than function, especially for the company owning strong brand equity. To expert consumer, corporation could set appropriate functional customization task to increase their perception value.This paper makes a comprehensive consideration of customization by including consumer, customization task and brand into an integrated framework, and thoroughly explores their impact on emotion and buying intention, which furthers our knowledge about mass customization.