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The purpose of this paper is to focus on online sales configurators (SCs), also known as mass-customization toolkits, which enable consumers to self-customize their product solutions online. The paper aims to provide new insights into which characteristics of an online SC increase the consumer-perceived benefits of possessing a mass-customized product.

Previous studies on mass customization (MC), sales configuration, and learning psychology are used to develop the research hypotheses, which are tested by analyzing data from 675 configuration experiences from a convenience sample of potential consumers using 31 real online SCs for laptops/notebooks, economy cars, and sport shoes/sneakers.

The paper finds support for the hypotheses that SCs with higher flexible-navigation, focused-navigation, and easy-comparison capabilities enhance not only the traditionally considered utilitarian benefit (UT), but also the consumer-perceived uniqueness benefit (UN) and self-expressiveness (SE) benefit (SE). Furthermore, consistent with the study’s hypotheses, SCs with higher benefit-cost communication and user-friendly product-space description capabilities are found to improve UT. The hypotheses that these two capabilities enhance UN and SE, however, are not supported. Post-hoc analyses suggest that the examined SCs are generally UT-centered and need improvement of their ability to communicate the UN and the SE a consumer could derive from the purchase of his/her configured product.

While prior research has primarily been concerned with conceptually arguing and empirically showing that uniqueness and self-expressiveness are two additional sources of consumer value in business-to-consumer MC, this is the first empirical study that offers insights into which characteristics online SCs should have in order to draw from these two value sources.

The development of mass-customization capability (MCC) is crucial for a growing number of manufacturing firms nowadays and presents great challenges, especially in the area of operations management. The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into which individual competencies (ICs) of an operations manager (OM) are important to the MCC of the manufacturing organization the OM works for.

A multiple-case study was designed, involving eight machinery manufacturers in one European country, to collect data on their MCC and on the ICs of their OMs. Empirical case data were triangulated with analytical conceptual arguments grounded in the existing literature.

The study provides empirical evidence of, and logical explanations for, the fact that OMs working in high-MCC manufacturing organizations use the ICs of negotiation, information seeking, efficiency orientation, analytical thinking and pattern recognition significantly more often than OMs employed by low-MCC organizations.

Future research could replicate this study in other industries and countries, as well as for other managerial roles.

The study provides indications for OM selection and training in companies that are pursuing a mass-customization strategy.

While the literature on technological and organization-level enablers of MCC has grown considerably, the understanding of its individual-level enablers is still limited and concerns mostly the workforce. This is the first study that relies not on practitioners’ opinions, but on data regarding manufacturers’ MCC and their managers’ ICs to shed light on which managerial competencies are important to a manufacturer’s MCC.

The operational capability of mass customization (MC) allows consumers to obtain products tailored to their idiosyncratic needs. This study aims to provide insights into the potential of this capability for countering a product's liability of foreignness – the negative effect of the out-group status of a product's country of origin (COO) on consumers' evaluations of the product.

Based on the social identity approach, it is hypothesized that this liability is reduced when a consumer product is mass-customized rather than standardized as per a mass-production strategy. This hypothesis is tested using a mixed between- and within-subject experiment.

When evaluating mass-produced sneakers, native German-speaking (Italian-speaking) South Tyrolean consumers rated the quality of Italian (German) sneakers significantly lower than that of German (Italian) sneakers. However, when the sneakers were mass-customized, this difference in perceived product quality was non-significant for both groups of consumers, supporting the research hypothesis.

Future research could replicate this study in other samples, with other product types, COOs and countries of destination, as well as at different degrees of product customization.

Business-to-consumer firms contemplating the development of their MC capability are made aware that the benefits of this operational capability might go beyond the typical advantages highlighted by the existing literature.

This paper joins the discussion on MC value by offering a theoretical explanation and empirical support for another mechanism through which the operational capability of MC can create value, at least in business-to-consumer industries: by countering a product's possible liability of foreignness and thus increasing perceived product quality in export markets.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a theory of the organizational changes related to the production‐planning process that facilitate application of form postponement (FP), an increasingly popular operations‐design principle meant to alleviate the negative impact of product variety and customization on operational performance.

To achieve the theory‐building objective, a multiple‐case study involving four cases in the machinery industry was designed. In the inductive theory‐building process, the authors borrowed from the information‐processing theory to further corroborate the internal validity and generalizability of the findings.

The theory proposed by the author indicates that greater utilization of lateral relations in the production‐planning process, higher production‐planning frequency, greater degree of self‐containment of the production‐planning task, and simplification of the production planning‐related environment favor application of FP.

The level of analysis of the theory is the production‐planning process of a product family within a company. Future research could extend inquiry of the organizational antecedents of FP at both higher and lower levels of analysis, such as the organization as a whole or the individuals participating in the production‐planning process.

The theory supports managerial decision making by suggesting how to redesign the organization part involved in the production‐planning process of a product family in order to apply FP. The difficulty and cost of this organizational redesign effort should be taken into account when companies consider FP implementation.

Past research has focused on changes to product design and to the manufacturing and supply chain process that enable FP. This paper augments the understanding of FP enablers by developing the first model of organizational antecedents of FP. It also responds to calls for more research integrating insights from organization theory and operations/supply chain management.

This paper aims to investigate the factors enabling or hindering the simultaneous pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility within a supply chain through the lens of a manufacturing plant seeking to implement a build‐to‐order (BTO) strategy.

To accomplish this empirical investigation, an in‐depth case study involving a manufacturing plant and its supply chain was designed. Prior to primary and secondary data collection, this research setting had already decided to implement a BTO strategy and had, moreover, carefully assessed several practices for BTO strategy implementation, as well as their interactions.

The studied case suggests that a number of approaches typically used to increase volume flexibility, actually negatively affect mix flexibility and vice versa. The existence of such trade‐offs may ultimately inhibit the implementation of a BTO strategy and this was the case in the studied company. Nevertheless, empirical evidence also suggests that, to some extent, volume flexibility and mix flexibility may be achieved synergistically, as initiatives such as component standardization or component‐process interface standardization would improve both volume flexibility and mix flexibility.

The pursuit of volume flexibility and mix flexibility in implementing a BTO strategy in a specific setting and from primarily an operations management perspective was investigated. As such, the findings can be complemented by viewing the case study results through the lens of other established general management theories or by replicating the study in different research settings.

While past research informs us about how manufacturing firms can successfully achieve mix flexibility or volume flexibility, there are few insights for understanding how volume flexibility and mix flexibility can both be simultaneously achieved within a manufacturing plant and its supply chain. This research fills this gap in the literature and contributes to the development of a theory of BTO strategy implementation, especially in terms of volume flexibility, mix flexibility and their interactions.

The operational outcomes of form postponement (FP) have been increasingly investigated in the last two decades under the effects of escalating product variety and diffusion of mass customisation strategies. However, conflicting or hard‐to‐relate findings are quite frequent in the literature, so that a unifying framework for operations decision making is still lacking. The purpose of this paper is to develop a typological theory that reconciles into a coherent picture extant research on FP effects on operational performance.

The paper defines three mutually exclusive and exhaustive types of FP at the company level of analysis. Then, it revisits, through the lens of this typology, the literature on FP and formalizes how, why and under which assumptions each FP type affects operational performance.

The paper demonstrates that, to predict and explain FP effects on operational performance, three types of FP should be distinguished. In fact, it is shown that either these FP types have different effects on a given performance dimension, or they have the same effect but the logical justification for this effect is often different according to the FP type being considered.

The paper's synopsis of past research accomplishments indicates that future work will have to investigate the operational implications of a specific FP type almost ignored in the literature, as well as test the relationships hypothesized in the literature. Further opportunities for future research include extending the level of analysis beyond the boundaries of the company and linking the paper's FP typology to the operations strategy discourse.

The lack of understanding of the benefits and costs of FP has been found to be a major obstacle to FP implementation. The paper's typological theory supports managerial decision making by clarifying what FP alternatives companies have and what are the operational implications for each of these alternatives.

The paper's typological theory reconciles apparently conflicting findings in the literature by explaining such differences in terms of differences in the FP type being investigated. Additionally, the typology helps avoid a twofold risk: on the one hand, the risk of generalizing an effect or mechanism that only applies to a specific FP type and, on the other hand, the risk of failing to detect type‐specific effects or mechanisms.