The Practice And Prospects Of Chinese Traditional Home Appliance Enterprises Product Customization In The Era Of Internet

The 21 st century is the age of the Internet and the network economy develops rapidly. E-commerce industry has been experiencing an explosive growth in China with the emerging of global leading e-commerce enterprises like Alibaba and JD, which has been making the online shopping become an important part of social spending. Meanwhile, traditional manufacturing Industries like home appliance industries seems not to enjoy the bonus of E-commerce, with its profits falling and the fierce competition. In this case, the traditional industries have started to explore how to achieve better integration with the Internet to adapt to the time and to meet increasingly diversified consumption. Thus network customization of the house appliances has come into being. However, studies about home appliances customization are very few in academic communities so far, especially lacking the theoretical studies of customization in the Internet environment, which this paper focuses on.Taking the research methods of the combination of theory and practice、case analysis and comparative analysis, this paper aims to study the practice and prospects of Chinese traditional home appliance industries product customization, trying to find the experience and lessons left by decades of China’s home appliance industry customization practice, and forecast to the future of appliances customization in the Internet environment. This paper reclassifies the customization patterns by whether it adopts the mass production, dividing it into the individualized customization、scale customization and 3D printing customization.Since 2000, China’s home appliance enterprises have begun to take B2 B customization by cooperating with appliance distribution businesses. B2 B customization meets the needs of consumers better,reduces dealers’ free-riding behaviors and maintains the stability of the sales system. Since 2010, China’s home appliance enterprises have begun to explore C2 B customization in the Internet environment. The C2 B customization has conducted in the enterprises’ own online malls and the third-party electronic business platforms. C2 B customization could help appliances enterprises to meet the needs of consumers better and get the marketing methods in the Internet environment. It also helps the e-commerce platforms to improve capabilities in hardware designing, manufacturing and the supply chain management. And 3D printing makes the supply chain more agile, becoming the future trend of home appliances customization.Customization pattern is also an effective practice of participatory marketing methods. In the future, customization patterns will combine with group- purchase,crowdsourcing, crowdfunding in more diverse and more depth ways, becoming an effective method in building Enterprise Ecosystem. Meanwhile, there is a huge market opportunity in small home appliances for customization patterns...