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Increasingly, customers are demanding products that fit their individual needs. Many firms respond by cultivating product individualization via mass customization, often integrating this capability via interactive platforms that connect them with customers. Despite such customization, research to date has lacked cohesion, often taking the organizational, rather than customer, view. The purpose of this paper is to provide inconclusive theorizing in regard to customization from the consumers’ perspective.

The review and synthesis of the literature revealed that co-configuration is an underexplored domain of mass customization. Consequently, an initial conceptualization of co-configuration is developed and compared with current customization strategies. Specifically, the definition and boundary conditions of co-configuration are compared with three domains of mass customization, namely, co-production, co-construction and co-design. This led to the development of research priority areas to establish an agenda for future research on mass customization and its role in customer’ firm relationships.

This paper provides the delineation of four distinct consumer customization strategies, conceptualized in a matrix, and proposes separate customer journey visualizations. In advancing the theoretical understanding by means of a unifying typology, this paper identifies three existing Cs of mass customization (co-production, co-construction and co-design) and focuses specifically on a fourth (co-configuration), identified as an understudied mass customization strategy.

This paper extends the previous conceptualizations of mass customization comprising co-production, co-design and co-construction. The proposed typology establishes a foundation for four research priority areas that can improve both academic rigor and practical application.

This paper reports the results of a survey conducted to explore issues surrounding mass customization and in particular its implications for operations management. The findings cover the market changes driving customization, the methods used to provide customized goods, the positive and negative effects of customization, and the difficulties of implementation. There are shown to be important implications for operations management in a strategy of mass customization, and thus substantial scope for further research by operations management academics.

Mass customization presents a paradox to traditional manufacturing practices. Historically, companies chose to produce either customized, crafted products or mass‐produced, standardized products. Thus, mass customization presents a paradox by combining customization and mass production, offering unique products in a mass‐produced, low cost, high volume production environment. If mass customization is truly a combination of mass production and craft manufacturer, how does a manufacturer become a mass customizer? Are the key principles of mass customization rooted in customized product knowledge or mass production techniques? Does the path to mass customization impact financial performances? This paper begins to answer these questions by exploring the total product mix of mass customizing plants using data gathered from 126 mass customizers. This study shows plants that choose mass customization approaches that match the non‐mass customized product line characteristics have higher financial performance than those firms without a matched product line.

In this paper, it is argued that the concept of mass customization should not be treated as an alternative strategy to market segmentation. It should be seen as an integral part of market segmentation theory which offers the best way to satisfy individual consumer’s unique needs and wants while yielding profits to companies. Though the overall objective of the concept of mass customization is to recognize individual differences among customers and modify the offerings accordingly, by using the logic of the segmentation theory, this paper argues that mass customization is also not simply equal to segmenting‐to‐one. If all the relevant variables that affect buyer behavior are taken into account, the result is an untenably large number of market segments (finally segment of one). However, practically, creating separate marketing programs for each individual in most circumstances will become extremely difficult, even not feasible, and less profitable. In response to this dilemma, this paper proposes a new concept of “Segment‐based mass customization”. The basic idea behind this concept is that, mass customization is the efforts of reaching a segment unit efficiently and profitably. The efficiency and profitability will be determined by whether the mass customization is based on an optimal segment size, which is subject to the market situation and company resources. Finally, this paper comes up with a series of propositions which are relevant to developing a good customization strategy.

The purpose of this paper is to present the results on a model for manufacturing under the constraints and conditions of mass customization environment.

The proposed model is based on manufacturing features and entails the concept of modular design. That is, manufacturing features are identified and analyzed in a way that enables the generation of what is called “manufacturing core”. Manufacturing cores are semi‐finished products that have certain manufacturing features. The core can be used to manufacture a range of products after conducting certain manufacturing processes. Manufacturing cores are generated through two phases of optimization. The first phase is known as product's manufacturing features analysis which includes starting features identification. The second phase is known as manufacturing cores formation that ends with generation of manufacturing cores.

The methodology is implemented on real products (flanges) as a case study. The proposed model for mass customization is compared at make‐to‐stock and make‐to‐order policies in terms of a burden which includes the time and the cost that are required to fulfil a production order. Applying the proposed model of mass customization entails the minimum total burden required.

When the number of generic and variant features increases, an automated feature‐recognition module or sub‐system is required to facilitate the extraction of manufacturing features.

The proposed methodology is used for design of customized product through the application of integrated design for modularity and mass customization approach for production.

The proposed methodology entails development of semi‐finished products based on manufacturing features that can be used for design and manufacturing of a range of products.

Mass customization has yet to fulfill its original purpose as established by marketing researchers to become an alternative to mass production, largely due to its inability to achieve mass market levels of efficiency. The purpose of this study is to survey consumer's perceptions, willingness and capabilities of participating in a mass customization system, and understand the implications of its findings related to an alternative production system, generative customization.

After an extensive literature review of mass customization, consumer behavior, complex adaptive systems and generative design, a survey was conducted across US and Swedish consumers relative to their willingness and perceptions regarding mass customization, with hypotheses based upon extant research standards.

The survey results found that consumers are ambivalent toward mass customization in mass markets, and a conceptual alternative (generative customization) appears to achieve, at least conceptually, the necessary objectives relative to product design conceptualization and fulfillment that mass customization cannot achieve.

A lack of significant findings from extant research regarding consumer perceptions and tolerances regarding mass customization in mass markets is a limitation to this study. The discussion of a new concept (generative customization) as a viable alternative to mass customization as a result of the survey findings needs to be validated empirically in future research.

The paper empirically validates a definition of mass customization as a complementary rather than an alternative to mass production. It also introduces and develops the concept of generative customization as viable alternative to mass production, albeit one that must be empirically validated in future research.

Most mass customization literature focuses on the move from mass production to mass customization. However, in some literature engineer‐to‐order (ETO) companies are also claiming to have become mass customizers, although it can be questioned if these companies conform to popular definitions of mass customizers. The purpose of this paper is to ask the question: under which conditions is it reasonable to label ETO companies as mass customizers?

First, definitions of mass customization are examined and related to ETO companies that move towards mass customization. Second, the individual transitions from mass production and ETO to mass customization are analyzed by: relating the transition to classifications from relevant literature; describing the motivations and risks associated with the transition; and defining some of the most important transition characteristics. Finally it is discussed if ETO companies can become mass customizers and under which conditions it would be reasonable to describe them as such.

The paper argues that from several angles it makes sense to label some ETO companies as mass customizers although the products are not at prices near mass produced ones.

To avoid dilution of the concept of mass customization, while not excluding ETO companies, it is suggested to start out with a broad definition of mass customization under which separate definitions of different kinds of mass customizers are created.

Although much has been written about mass customization, and ETO companies in much literature have been labeled as mass customizers, the essential discussion of under which conditions it is reasonable to label ETO companies as mass customizers has been missing.

The purpose of this paper is to derive a new method for developing sizing systems for the mass customization of garments.

A range of recently published works has been studied. A new method is derived by following a basic statistical analysis on anthropometric data which are supported by an iterative mass customization model and introduced “satisfaction performance” indices. The derived method is applied successfully to an anthropometric data consisting of 12,810 Greek men.

With the proposed method, it is possible to control the degree of mass customization and the corresponding number of garment sizes. Under this way, a balance between the number of sizes (in other words: production cost) and the percentage satisfaction of consumers can be achieved. The proposed method consists of six subsequent tasks which are applied to the target population data for the development of mass customization models for male shirts, coats and trousers.

Future work could be focused on the development of methods for the automatic garments grading with respect to the proposed mass customization models and practise.

The methodology presented in this paper can be applied to the development of mass customization models for other categories of garments and target population.

The overall purpose of this research was to explore the potential for applying mass customization in the apparel manufacturing and retail sectors by investigating consumers’ interests in it as a concept. A series of seven focus groups were used to explore consumer preferences related to mass customization and to identify potential barriers to adoption of the concept. Potential scenarios illustrated with video were used to describe how mass customization might be implemented. A deductive approach to data reduction allowed researchers to distill and describe data according to predetermined categories and to identify additional categories that emerged in the analysis. Converging positive consumer comments moved researchers forward in understanding the concept while negative comments were viewed as barriers. The result was the construction of a consumer‐based model which provides an initial framework for researchers and the business community to use in exploring how the paradigm of mass customization could be applied as a business strategy in the apparel industry.

This paper addresses the issue of mass‐customisation from the point of view of consumer demand. It aims to develop a framework to examine the demand side of the mass‐customisation equation which will allow researchers to identify whether a market of customers who are ready for mass‐customised products exists. In doing so it considers in particular three “inconveniences” of mass‐customisation: the increased price of customised products; the delay in receipt of custom‐made products; and the need for customers to invest time in specifying their preferences before the product can be produced.