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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.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the pros and cons of service standardization (vs customization) from the consumer’s perspective, the key factors influencing consumers’ preference for standardized (vs customized) services and the outcomes of service standardization (vs customization).

The authors conducted a qualitative study and two behavioral experiments to test the hypotheses.

The authors find that the advantages of service customization include greater perceived control and higher consumer satisfaction. The drawbacks of service customization include greater perceived risk. These findings also suggest that consumers’ preference for standardized (vs customized) service depends on their consumption goal. Specifically, consumers with a hedonic goal tend to prefer customized services, while those with a utilitarian goal tend to prefer standardized services. These effects are moderated by their need for uniqueness.

The qualitative and experimental studies in this research reveal the antecedents (utilitarian vs hedonic goal) on consumer preference for service standardization versus customization, as well as the consequences in terms of perceived risk, consumer satisfaction and perceived control. The experimental studies were conducted with Chinese and American consumers, respectively, which lend credence to the robustness of the findings.

Results of the present research provide new insights into service standardization versus customization and have significant practical implications. In particular, service organizations should consider designing the appropriate service mode based on consumers’ characteristics, particularly their consumption goals and their need for uniqueness. If the customers focus on efficiency and functionality, the organization should try to provide standardized services. In contrast, for customers who are seeking fun and a novel experience, the service firm should try to tailor to their hedonic needs.

While previous research identifies “heterogeneity” as a key characteristic of services in general, the present findings qualify this received wisdom. In particular, the authors show that consumers’ preference for service standardization versus customization is a function of their consumption goal and need for uniqueness. Thus, the present findings refine the current understanding of service heterogeneity, which makes a significant contribution to the services marketing literature.

Mass customization (MC) is a well-established strategy for providing high levels of customization while achieving the scale economies of high volume production. The purpose of this paper is to explore a new service design configuration, the “mid office,” as a service interface which may support front office customization capabilities while protecting the back office from disruption. The authors posit that it may facilitate MC by enabling product/service and organizational modularity.

The research is based on a single case study of a large European bank’s payment services, traditionally high volume, low variety operations. The bank adopted a MC strategy which involved the creation of a mid office. The analysis spans product/service and organizational design.

When combined with menu-driven customization and reuse modularization, the mid office appears to support partial rather than full MC. It facilitates postponement of customization to the assembly stage through service coproduction, organizational decoupling, and the streamlining of employee adaptive behaviors.

The study bears the limitations typical of case study research; however this was appropriate given the exploratory nature of the research into a nascent concept.

The paper identifies a series of design decisions to enable practitioners to choose between full and partial service MC, ensuring design coherence through a mirror effect of service modularity and organizational modularity.

It is argued that the mid office is a service interface which facilitates partial MC by enabling service and organizational modularity. The paper reinterprets the archetypes of full and partial MC in service terms, and proposes a contingent approach to service MC implementation based on service value.

This study aims to investigate the impacts of service category (utilitarian vs hedonic) on chosen degree of uniqueness (CDOU) and consumers' willingness to pay more (WTPM), as well as the moderating roles of consumers' narcissism trait (high vs low) and processing mode (rational vs experiential) on the relationship between service category and CDOU.

This study conducts one online experiment-questionnaire study and one between-subject lab experiment to test the hypotheses.

This study finds that consumers are more likely to choose unique choices in hedonic service customization. Consumers' CDOU has a positive effect on their attitudes toward WTPM. In addition, consumers' processing mode moderates the relationship between service category and CDOU.

The findings provide new insights into better understanding the factors affecting the choice of service customization and have significant practical implications. First, consumers' different desire for uniqueness of different service should not be neglected when examining the values of service customization. Second, high-level CDOU is quite prevalent for hedonic (vs utilitarian) service customization, especially for consumers with experiential processing mode.

While previous studies state “need for uniqueness” as a key characteristic of product customization in general, we extend it to intangible service customization and connect it with consumers' WTPM. In addition, the moderating role of individual trait and decision-making processing mode is also checked. Thus, the findings refine the existing understanding of the relationship between uniqueness and service customization.

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.

Modularity has been identified as one of the most important methods for achieving mass customization. However, service models that apply varying levels of modularity and customization also exist and are appropriate for various business situations. The objective of this paper is to introduce a framework with which different customer service offerings, service production processes, and service production networks can be analyzed in terms of both modularity and customization.

The paper builds theory and offers a systematic approach for analyzing service modularity and customization. To illustrate the dimensions of the framework, the authors also provide service examples of the various aspects.

In the previous literature, the concepts of modularity and customization have often been discussed in an intertwined manner. The authors find that when modularity and customization are regarded as two separate dimensions, and different perspectives– such as the service offering, the service production process, and the service production network – are combined we can create a useful framework for analysis.

Rigorous testing is a subject for future research.

The framework helps companies to analyze their service offerings and to compare themselves with other companies. It seems that in practice many combinations of modularity and customization levels are used in the three perspectives.

This paper develops a framework for analyzing service offerings in terms of modularity and customization. The framework provides a basis for analyzing different combinations of these two aspects from the three perspectives, and herein lies its value.

Adopting a socio-spatial approach, this study develops a consumer-centric conception of service experience customization. In contrast to existing service customization research, which has focused on company-centric approaches, the purpose of this paper is to examine the practices through which consumers use, abuse, subvert, transform, or complement organizational resources to construct their consumption experiences.

The empirical context for this study is a Meetup group: a consumer network organized around members’ shared interests and activities in theme parks. The research utilized participant observation of members’ face-to-face activities during two years and over 80 events, interviews with key informants, and content analysis of online interactions.

The findings outline how consumers interact across physical and virtual spaces utilizing technologies and material objects. The data are used to propose a new consumer-centric conceptualization of experience customization, distinguishing between three modes: collaborative co-production, cooperative co-creation, and subversive co-creation.

It is argued that the three modes of customization provide a way to understand how consumers mobilize and (re)deploy organizational resources to create experiences that may complement existing service propositions, but may also transform them in ways that challenge the service provider’s original goals and expectations. Furthermore, this study identifies the factors that shape which modes of customization are possible and how they are enacted. Specifically, the discussion examines how experiential complexity, governability, the compatibility of consumer and organizational practices, and the collective mobilization of resources may determine the scope and form of customization.

Although practitioners and scholars alike embrace service customization as a possibly powerful management instrument, its impact on customer relationships as well as contingencies for its effective application are not well understood. Drawing from relationship marketing and exchange theory, this paper aims to develop a model of customer relationship outcomes of service customization and the efficacy of service customization.

Two large‐scale, representative, cross‐sectional studies in different service industries based on the European Customer Satisfaction Index framework are conducted, and PLS path modeling is applied to test the model.

Customization increases perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, customer trust, and ultimately customer loyalty toward a service provider. Customization has both direct and mediated effects on customer loyalty and interacts with the effects of customer satisfaction and customer trust on loyalty.

Service customization is a viable instrument for relationship marketing. Its efficacy depends on customer satisfaction and customer trust. While this study solely focuses on the impact of service customization, future research could assess the relative importance of service customization in the presence of other relationship marketing instruments.

Service providers can use service customization as an effective instrument for achieving not only higher customer satisfaction, but also higher customer loyalty. Service customization is most effective for companies that have deficits in satisfying their customers, while at the same time their customer relationships are characterized by a high level of trust. These results help managers to decide upon resource allocation to enhance customer satisfaction, trust and loyalty.

This paper investigates the simultaneous effects of service customization on customer loyalty and other relationships variables and offers new insights relatively to the nature and size of customization effects. It fills an important gap in the knowledge of customization outcomes, and clarifies under which circumstances service customization is most effective. The paper is of great value for service providers that face the decision whether to customize their offering or not.

The aim of this article is to examine the interaction effect of customization mode and regulatory focus on the “tailoring” outcomes of customized services in both the number of options retained and consumer evaluations.

Two experiments investigate the interaction between customization mode and consumer regulatory focus, together with mediating and moderating factors.

An interaction effect of customization mode and regulatory focus exists: it significantly influences the number of options retained, and prevention‐focused consumers retain more options in the final customized offering than promotion‐focused consumers in subtractive customization, whereas this effect is reduced in additive customization; it significantly affects how consumers evaluate the customization service with regard to task enjoyment and attitudes toward products; and it is fully mediated by task enjoyment and positively moderated by product familiarity.

This article provides an important contribution to service customization design and regulatory focus theory by shedding light on the interaction between customization mode and consumer regulatory focus and revealing how this interaction affects the decision outcomes of customization services.

This paper aims to investigate multidimensional customer engagement behaviors (CEBs) as antecedents of action loyalty in hospitality contexts and examine service conditions that inhibit and facilitate the former relationship.

This paper tests a holistic framework based on transaction data from 5,855 active members of a hotel firm. The hypotheses are examined using ordinary least squares regression.

By integrating transaction-related CEBs with non-transaction-related CEBs, this paper found that three CEB constructs (i.e. feedback, mobilizing and cross-buying) contribute significantly to action loyalty in hospitality contexts. These effects vary depending on the inhibitor (service failure) and the facilitator (service customization).

Hotel managers should value customer engagement as a marketing tool to retain customers. When engaged customers encounter service failure and customization, managers can react differently to facilitate consumers’ action loyalty.

Contrary to prior studies focusing on the effects of general CEBs on attitudinal loyalty, this study examines the diverse impacts of multidimensional CEBs on customers’ action loyalty and confirms boundary conditions to coordinate the effects between CEBs from a hotel firm’s perspective.