| Consumers engaging in product customization are given the ability to modify the physical attributes of a product. Drawing on product conspicuousness and need for uniqueness literature, this thesis examined the effect that a product's level of exclusivity (necessity vs. luxury) and consumption visibility (private vs. public) had on the importance placed on customizing different types of attributes (hedonic vs. utilitarian), and it was also investigated whether individual differences in a consumer's need for uniqueness moderated this process. Data was collected through a questionnaire that instructed respondents to evaluate the importance of six physical attributes for four different products. As predicted, results suggest that product-level variation along where a product is consumed, and whether it is or is not needed for daily life, drove differences in the importance placed on hedonic and utilitarian attributes. Furthermore, consumers' need for uniqueness was found to weakly moderate these differences, but only for consumption visibility. |
