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Traditionally, executives have assumed that trade‐offs – high quality or low cost, efficiency or customization – are inevitable. In defining their businesses, the choice has always been seen in terms of mass production of inexpensive, commodity‐like products or services (the assembly line) on the one hand, and on the other hand, premium‐priced, individually‐tailored, highly differentiated offerings (the “job shop”). But the notion that such trade‐offs and choices are permanent, inevitable business realities is fading as a new management paradigm – mass customization – emerges. Mass customization consists of cutting‐edge management methods and tools that give companies the ability to produce customized, affordable, high‐quality goods and services, but with the shorter cycle times and lower costs historically associated with mass production and standardization. Proposes that much of the power of mass customization, like total quality management before it, lies in its visionary and strategic implications. Also delineates an exploratory diagnostic framework to help companies assess the potential for mass customization as an explicit strategy in their industries. The key dimensions of this framework are customer sensitivity, process amenability, competitive environment, and organizational readiness.

This study investigated the impacts of the interaction experiential customization (IEC) mode on consumers' information processing fluency and green customization intention (GCI) as well as the moderating effect of consumers' self-construal.

This study conducted an online field experiment, questionnaire study and between-subjects laboratory experiment to test the hypotheses.

It was found that IEC had a significant positive effect on consumers' GCI. Moreover, consumer retrieval processing fluency played a partial mediating role in the relationship between IEC and GCI. In addition, consumers' self-construal moderated the “IEC? Three dimensions of processing fluency” relationships.

The results emphasized the importance of IEC in influencing consumers' consumption intention in a green customization setting and have some practical implications, that is, companies have the opportunity to use appropriate digital choice architecture designs, which can enhance consumer processing fluency when promoting eco-friendly products in the customized consumption process, especially for independent consumers.

This study focused on the customization design on consumers' GCI and explained the mechanism of impact of IEC on improving consumers' processing fluency and GCI in a product customization setting based on the fluency theory. In addition, this study investigated the moderating effect of consumers' self-construal (independent vs interdependent) on their significant different information processing modes for low-carbon choices.

This study aims to empirically test how sponsored video customization (i.e. the degree to which a sponsored video is customized for a sponsoring brand) affects video shares differently depending on influencer characteristics (i.e. mega influencer and expert influencer) and brand characteristics (i.e. brand establishment and product involvement).

This study uses a unique real-world data set that combines coded variables (e.g. customization) and objective video performance (e.g. sharing) of 365 sponsored videos to test the hypotheses. A negative binomial model is used to analyze the data set.

This study finds that the effect of video customization on video shares varies across contexts. Video customization positively affects shares if they are made for well-established brands and high-involvement products but negatively influences shares if they are produced by mega and expert influencers.

This study extends the influencer marketing literature by focusing on a new media modality – sponsored video. Drawing on the multiple inference model and the persuasion knowledge theory, this study teases out different conditions under which video customization is more or less likely to foster audience engagement, which both influencers and brands care about. The chosen research setting may limit the generalizability of the findings of this study.

The findings suggest that mega and expert influencers need to consider if their endorsement would backfire on a highly customized video. Brands that aim to engage customers with highly-customized videos should gauge their decision by taking into consideration their years of establishment and product involvement. For video-sharing platforms, especially those that are planning to expand their businesses to include “matching-making services” for brands and influencers, the findings provide theory-based guidance on optimizing such matches.

This paper fulfills an urgent research need to study how brands and influencers should produce sponsored videos to achieve optimal outcomes.

Customization allows brands to provide goods that match customers’ preferences, but its impact on consumer–brand relationships is unclear. This study aims to examine the impact of two key moderators on the effectiveness of customization to enhance brand’s perceived partner quality, which mediates the relationship between customization and brand attitude.

Study 1 (n = 219) tests the moderated–mediation relationship, the effect of customization (IV) on perceived partner quality (mediator), and its indirect effect on brand attitude (DV), which is moderated by consumers’ self-construal orientation (Moderator 1). Study 2 (n = 416) extends the model tested in Study 1 by including an additional moderator, shopping task context (Moderator 2).

Results empirically demonstrate the impact of self-construal and shopping task context on the effectiveness of customization in improved customer–brand partner quality and eventual brand attitude.

Customization may not appeal to every customer for the same reason. Marketers must target customers’ individual traits (independents vs interdependents) and understand the context of the shopping task context (self-purchase vs gift-giving).

The work reveals how brands can enhance consumers’ perceptions of the brand by allowing them to customize the product. It is novel in demonstrating that customization is not just a fine-grained segmentation strategy but a brand building tool. It highlights contextual factors affecting the outcome of customization by demonstrating the conditions under which it is most effective.

This study is a reference for manufacturers who are promoting their product-service system (PSS) development. Currently, improvements in both digital customization and sustainability for various smart PSS categories have been considered rarely. This paper addresses this research gap by developing relevant models.

The development trends of customization-oriented PSS are described in a literature review. An in-depth multiple-case study methodology is adopted, and seven manufacturing companies are sampled. The goal is to identify digital customization measures that can be employed on representative smart PSS models and to explore how these models can create sustainable value.

This study provides valuable insights by uncovering a synthesis framework for achieving customization of the product/use/result-oriented smart PSSs, and the relevant representative smart functions are summarized. This identifies how digital customization capabilities can improve sustainability, including direct economic value for customers as well as additional social benefits and environmental improvements during customization.

Currently, the influence of digitalization on customized offerings and the relevant impact on sustainability development have not been fully addressed to date. This study provides comprehensive information with a reference value for digital customization transformation among the three main types of smart PSS.

Algorithm bias refers to repetitive computer program errors that give some users more weight than others. The aim of this article is to provide a deeper insight of algorithm bias in AI-enabled ERP software customization. Although algorithmic bias in machine learning models has uneven, unfair and unjust impacts, research on it is mostly anecdotal and scattered.

As guided by the previous research (Akter et al., 2022), this study presents the possible design bias (model, data and method) one may experience with enterprise resource planning (ERP) software customization algorithm. This study then presents the artificial intelligence (AI) version of ERP customization algorithm using k-nearest neighbours algorithm.

This study illustrates the possible bias when the prioritized requirements customization estimation (PRCE) algorithm available in the ERP literature is executed without any AI. Then, the authors present their newly developed AI version of the PRCE algorithm that uses ML techniques. The authors then discuss its adjoining algorithmic bias with an illustration. Further, the authors also draw a roadmap for managing algorithmic bias during ERP customization in practice.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no prior research has attempted to understand the algorithmic bias that occurs during the execution of the ERP customization algorithm (with or without AI).

Export manufacturing firms from emerging markets can better meet customer needs by providing customization, which leads to competitive advantages. Although both practice and academic research have deeply discussed customization, the question of whether customization promotes export manufacturing firms' product innovation in the global B2B market is largely unexplored. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.

This paper collects survey data from 2,248 export manufacturing firms in China and uses hierarchical moderated regression to explore the relationship between customization and product innovation in the global B2B market and their boundary conditions.

This research shows that customization positively affects export manufacturing firms' product innovation in the context of the global B2B market, and it shows that internal governance structure (contract governance and relationship governance) and external governance structure (legal enforceability) can be used as boundary conditions that affect the relationship. Specifically, contract governance has an inverted U-shaped moderating effect on the relationship between customization and product innovation; moreover, relationship governance and legal enforceability can strengthen the positive relationship between customization and product innovation.

The study explores the relationship between customization and product innovation in the global B2B market and examines the moderating effect of internal and external governance structures. In addition, the study enriches the research related to customization and product innovation in the context of the global B2B market and provides essential practical insight into the survival of export manufacturing firms from emerging markets.

Customization, a marketing strategy through providing personalized products, might be a new solution to motivate consumer feedbacks in electronic commerce (e-commerce) websites. Taking the dual-value of customization (emotional involvement and uniqueness expression) as the theoretical basis, this study aims to investigate the impact of customization on consumer's word-of-mouth (WOM) behaviors and contents by motivating: (1) more, (2) faster, (3) positive at first and then negative, (4) longer and (5) more helpful WOMs.

A field study was conducted with multi-sourced data: customer order data from a Chinese retailer and WOM data from Amazon.com. The two datasets were matched to filter out 463 online reviews among 6,892 customers who placed customized orders. Heckman's two-stage model, logistic regression, Ordinary least squares regression, Tobit regression, analysis of covariance and Lind–Mehlum U Test were used in the data analysis.

This study has found that (1) customization level motivates WOM behaviors including WOM posting and WOM speed, (2) an inverted U-shaped relationship exists between customization level and consumer rating and (3) customization level has a significantly positive impact on WOM helpfulness but not on WOM length.

This study advances theoretical development in the area of WOM motivators by proposing a new product-centric approach, customization, to stimulate voluntary WOMs. Empirical field research that analyzes consumer's real responses to customization is in scarcity. The dual-value of customized products is proposed as the underlying mechanism to explain the impact of customization level on consumer's WOM behaviors/contents. An interesting inverted U-shaped relationship is found between customization level and customer rating. This research provides nuanced practical guidance for websites, companies and consumers.

By introducing the mass customization service mode into the cloud logistics environment, this paper studies the joint optimization of service provider selection and customer order decoupling point (CODP) positioning based on the mass customization service mode to provide customers with more diversified and personalized service content with lower total logistics service cost.

This paper addresses the general process of service composition optimization based on the mass customization mode in a cloud logistics service environment and constructs a joint decision model for service provider selection and CODP positioning. In the model, the two objective functions of minimum service cost and most satisfactory delivery time are considered, and the Pareto optimal solution of the model is obtained via the NSGA-II algorithm. Then, a numerical case is used to verify the superiority of the service composition scheme based on the mass customization mode over the general scheme and to verify the significant impact of the scale effect coefficient on the optimal CODP location.

(1) Under the cloud logistics mode, the implementation of the logistics service mode based on mass customization can not only reduce the total cost of logistics services by means of the scale effect of massive orders on the cloud platform but also make more efficient use of a large number of logistics service providers gathered on the cloud platform to provide customers with more customized and diversified service content. (2) The scale effect coefficient directly affects the total cost of logistics services and significantly affects the location of the CODP. Therefore, before implementing the mass customization logistics service mode, the most reasonable clustering of orders on the cloud logistics platform is very important for the follow-up service combination.

The originality of this paper includes two aspects. One is to introduce the mass customization mode in the cloud logistics service environment for the first time and summarize the operation process of implementing the mass customization mode in the cloud logistics environment. Second, in order to solve the joint decision optimization model of provider selection and CODP positioning, this paper designs a method for solving a mixed-integer nonlinear programming model using a multi-layer coding genetic algorithm.

This study aims to investigate the impact of environmental responsibility (ER) on consumers' green customization intention (GCI), as well as the separate and joint moderating effects of consumers' negative perceptions and environmental claim type (ECT) on the relationship between ER and GCI.

In this study, two online experimental questionnaires and one between-subject lab experiment were conducted to test all hypotheses.

This study found that high-ER consumers are more likely to choose environmental options in the product customization process (versus low ER). The effect of ER on consumers' GCI is moderated by consumers' negative perceptions of green consumption (e.g. green skepticism and perceived environmental premium (PEP)). Additionally, ECT's joint moderating effect and consumers' negative perception of green customization consumption can be decreased by a substantive (versus associative) claim type in message framing.

The findings provide new insights into the factors affecting consumers' GCIs and have significant practical implications. First, consumers' different ER levels should not be neglected when examining the value of green customization. Second, consumers' green skepticism and PEP could reduce consumers' GCI. Third, the use of substantive environmental claims may also be particularly helpful for companies' communication strategies regarding consumers' low-level negative perceptions of green options.

While previous studies state “environmental responsibility” as a key characteristic of general green consumption, the authors extend that to a green customization process and connect that with consumers' negative perceptions and ECT. In addition, the separate and joint moderating effects of consumers' negative perceptions and ECT were examined. Thus, these findings refine the existing understanding of the relationship between ER and green customization.