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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.

Mass customization entails the mass production of individually customized goods and services. Co‐design is a mass customization option where a product's design is based on the customer's selections from a range of design feature offerings. A model comprised of relationships between individual differences, motivations for using co‐design, and willingness to use co‐design was proposed and statistically supported using 521 university subjects from different regions of the USA and the analysis of moment structures (AMOS) statistic. As hypothesized, optimum stimulation level (OSL) predicted two clothing interest factors: experimenting with appearance (EA) and enhancement of individuality (EI). As proposed, OSL and EA predicted the two motivations, trying co‐design as an exciting experience and using co‐design to create a unique product, whereas EI only predicted using co‐design to create a unique product. Both motives were mediating variables between individual differences and willingness to use co‐design, but using co‐design to create a unique product had a stronger effect. Theoretical and marketing implications were discussed.

This study intends to examine consumers' fashion customization experiences through a web content mining (WCM) approach. By applying the theory of customer value, this study explores the benefits and costs of two levels of mass customization (MC) to identify the values derived from style (i.e. shoe customization) and fit customization experiences (i.e. apparel customization) and further to compare the dominating dimensions of value derived across style and fit customization.

A WCM approach was applied. Also, two case studies were conducted with one focusing on style customization and the other focusing on fit customization. The brand Vans was selected to examine style customization in study 1. The brand Sumissura was selected to examine fit customization in study 2. Consumers' comments on customization experiences from these two brands were collected through social networks, respectively. After data cleaning, 394 reviews for Vans and 510 reviews for Sumissura were included in the final data analysis. Co-occurrence plots, feature extraction and grouping were used for the data analysis.

The emotional value was found to be the major benefit for style customization, while the functional value was indicated as the major benefit for fit customization, followed by ease of use and emotional value. In addition, three major themes of costs, including unsatisfied service, disappointing product performance and financial risk, were revealed by excavating and evaluating consumers' feedback of their actual clothing customization experiences with Sumissura.

This study initiates the effort to use web mining, specifically, the WCM approach to thoroughly investigate the benefits and costs of MC through real consumers' feedback of two different types of fashion products. The analysis of this study also reflects the levels of customization: style and fit. It provides an in-depth text analysis of online MC consumers' feedback through the use of feature extraction analysis and word co-occurrence networks.

Investigates the role of brand name in consumers' decision making during a customization process, and develops a conceptual understanding of the factors influencing the role of brand name from a “search vs experience” perspective. Addresses the strategic relationship of brand with perceived product/service/information preference match and the impact of preference match on consumer “willingness to pay for customization”. Brand name was found to be an important decision variable for customization in terms of getting a better preference match. Brand name still holds an important role on consumer communications, as was expected. Therefore, it is reasonable to believe that customization would not “commoditize” brands, but rather increase the effect of brand names in purchase decision making. High‐knowledge consumers reported stronger brand name effect in terms of its importance and usefulness in their decision making. The brand name effect varies across product categories, and the effect is stronger in the customization of search products than that in experience products. Thus, brand names have greater impact on choices in a search product where less total quality information on components is available for facilitating consumer choices. Discusses managerial implications of the study's findings.

This paper aims to form a best practice guide on how to successfully customize employees' work experience to engage the workforce and boost talent retention, as well as employee performance and productivity to the benefit of the organization and its workforce.

For the new book Workforce of One: Revolutionizing Talent Management through Customization, research was carried out involving in‐depth interviews with more than two dozen employees, 70 executives, over 100 top organizations and a survey of 557 US employees. Using this information, as well as extensive focus on Best Buy as a case study organization that has successfully implemented customization approaches, this paper aims to demonstrate that addressing the needs of the individual and tailoring the work experience ultimately fosters a high‐performing motivated workforce.

Many organizations are now working to create a customizable work experience for their employees, utilizing customization experiences familiar to those aimed at consumers by the marketing function. Through the interviews, Accenture was able to identify four main approaches to workforce customization, which are manageable, scalable, reliable and just.

Just like employees, companies are all different, with unique strategies, histories, type of employees, values and cultures. As such, their best approach in creating a customization strategy is to use those customization approaches that best suit their unique needs. By using one or more of the workforce‐of‐one customization approaches, organizations can enjoy a substantial impact across the board.

The customization approaches identified by Accenture – segmentation of the workforce, offering modular choices, defining broad and simple rules, and fostering employee‐defined personalization – avoids the usual pitfalls associated with workforce customization, such as a plethora of one‐off individual side deals, which can foster a negative workplace dynamic. Instead they offer an opportunity to establish more flexible systems, radically redefining the way HR supports its employees, yet ultimately creating a strong competitive advantage for the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to make contributions toward new knowledge and understanding of how marketers can provide effective online customization experiences for customers. The practicality of online mass customization has received much attention as consumers perceive more value from customized products than from their standardized counterparts. Little research has been done to understand consumers’ behavioral intentions in response to these value additions. This study incorporates product information framing in developing and empirically testing a model of the relationship between online customization and price sensitivity, endowment addition and expected likelihood of product return.

The relationship among the constructs specified in the model was tested using multiple group structural equation modeling analysis.

The findings indicate that consumers perceived knowledge gain via customization process influences the utilitarian value, which directly impacts levels of likelihood of product return and price sensitivity. The process value, on the hedonic side, influences more on the endowment addition. Endowment addition is found to mediate the relationship between the hedonic benefits and the two utilitarian outcome variables: price sensitivity and likelihood of product return.

Understanding the consequences of customization is particularly crucial for marketers. This research is the first to expand and further our knowledge of customization, particularly in relation to its outcomes of customers’ behavioral intentions.

Many e-commerce companies adopt a product customization platform offering various choices for customers to configure products to better satisfy their needs. However, a method to effectively measure customer satisfaction is lacking. This paper aims to investigate customers' perception of time in the online configuration process of customized products and seeks to propose time perception as the measurement of the effectiveness of online product customization.

An online laptop customization system was used in an empirical experiment to collect respondents' answers in a set of research questions. Regression and correlation analysis were conducted to investigate the factors affecting customers' satisfaction as well as the relationships with time perception.

The experimental results reveal several factors in customers' perception of time during the online product customization process. First, customers tend to overestimate the amount of time spent in a short-duration task but underestimate the amount of time spent in a long-duration task. Second, customers' perceptions of time are significantly correlated with their satisfaction with the configured products, and perceived time is moderately correlated with their satisfaction with the configuration process. Third, the difficulty of customization tasks and customers' motivation to process information also significantly affect customers' perceptions of time.

This paper advances the research on time perception by developing a new relative segmentation-based method to estimate the subjective perception of time. This study also makes several contributions to product customization research: the authors fill a research gap in the field of product customization by incorporating customers' perceptions of time into the measurement of customer satisfaction and by identifying the significant relationships among customers' perception of time, the ease of task selection, the customers' motivation to process information, and customers' satisfaction with customized products. These results aid in the design of online product customization systems.

Mass customization is a production process that allows consumers to customize products from an array of options to suit their preferences and needs and benefit from large-scale production efficiencies. In recent years, several apparel retailers have integrated customization into their online presence. While the benefits of online apparel mass customization (OAMC) are apparent, factors that determine the usage of the process are many. Therefore, it is important to explore these factors and understand the relationships between them and the impact on the intention to use OAMC.

A review of studies published in the last decade was conducted through the Scopus, Web of Science and JSTOR databases in September 2023. Peer-reviewed research articles published in the English language were included. These studies were carried out in the United States of America, Canada, Korea and China and addressed motivations and antecedents of OAMC technology.

The data were extracted, and the findings were synthesized. The review process enabled us to examine several theories and determinants of OAMC. The latter were categorized into the following themes: “consumer personality and psychology”, “consumer perceptions”, “consumer behaviour determinants” and “process, experience and product”. The influence of consumer personality traits, psychogenic needs, characteristics and other facilitating conditions emerged through the review.

The purpose of this paper is to study the various determinants of OAMC and thereby provide valuable information to businesses in OAMC domains to improve customized processes, understand consumers' motivations and develop marketing strategies that improve overall satisfaction with OAMC.

The objective of this study is to investigate consumer motivations and purchase behaviors with respect to cookies with customized packaging and consumer interest in different types of customization in the Italian food industry.

The study was conducted by performing a quantitative analysis of 642 surveys collected via Google Forms. A repeated-measures ANOVA, univariate ANOVA, chi-squared test, correlation analysis and linear regression analysis were conducted using SPSS.

Customers buy cookies with customized packaging as personal gifts to someone they care about. The ability to insert their initials or a personalized phrase appears to increase customers’ positive attitudes toward buying cookies with customized packaging. Those interested in this type of customization are willing to pay more, regardless of the type of customization.

In the survey, only some types of customization not previously extracted from a focus group are explored, and the analysis covers only the food industry and does not take a cross-sectional approach. In addition, we specifically refer to the Italian market, which means that results cannot be generalized.

From a managerial perspective, our results highlight that food industry companies should take advantage of the opportunity to segment the demand for customized packaging with respect to consumers’ attitudes and their motivation toward food products.

From a theoretical perspective, this study analyzes consumer attitudes and behaviors toward purchasing cookies with customized packaging. From a managerial perspective, the results of the study highlight interesting courses of action for companies in the food industry that would like to use the tool of customization by intervening in terms of the packaging rather than the product itself.

Hoping to increase the productivity of their employees, firms provide and expect their employees to use approved mobile apps. However, despite an intuitive appeal, the relationship between information technology usage and productivity is still seen as paradoxical. This study examines the relationship between employees' experience and engagement with business mobile apps provided by employers and its effects on employee work productivity.

Data from respondents who use employer-provided business apps were used to test the hypotheses. Measurement-corrected latent scores extracted from the PLS measurement evaluation were used in regression-centric assessment using PROCESS.

Results indicate that employee-users’ experience-based attributions of the business app, i.e. customization, performance quality and compatibility, have positive effects on productivity mediated by participation intensity. Further, work type (retail vs non-retail) and the depth of the employee user’s experience moderate experience-based attributions' indirect effects on productivity.

Unlike previous studies delving into this topic, this study focuses solely on the mediation and moderation effects for hypothesis testing. Specifically, this study investigates effects conditional on work type (retail vs non-retail), which the authors believe has significant implications for retailing. These findings have interesting implications for both future research and managers.