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"Customization"
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Style and fit customization: a web content mining approach to evaluate online mass customization experiences
PurposeThis 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.Design/methodology/approachA 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.FindingsThe 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.Originality/valueThis 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.
Journal Article
Mass customization : opportunities, methods, and challenges for manufacturers
Mass Customization examines the business opportunities, considerations, and challenges manufacturers in various industries must weigh before committing to the significant investment in machinery and software needed to go to mass customization. For manufacturers who decide that it's time to take the plunge, the author describes the proven methods and latest technologies for making mass customization work seamlessly and profitably on the factory floor. Mass customization -- the automated manufacturing of bespoke products, profitably combining the low unit costs of mass production with the flexibility of building custom products to order -- has been touted as the next big thing for more than a quarter of a century. Until recently, however, mass customization made only modest inroads in a few industries. Now, the convergence of new ICT and manufacturing technologies with traditional CNC technologies means that mass customization's moment has arrived for breaking out into a wide range of industries. Hans Kull is an engineer and mathematician who applies his expertise in combinatorial optimization, programming, and engineering to devising end-to-end automated solutions for mass customization, automating and optimizing all processes from bespoke parts supply, order processing, production, and waste minimization to packing and delivery. He shares with his readers practical lessons for making mass customization succeed, case studies from various industries, and an insiders vision of the business implications of mass customization's coming of age.
Book
Contingent Response to Self-Customization Procedures: Implications for Decision Satisfaction and Choice
Self-customization is the process by which consumers seek to customize offerings to their own preferences. In this article, the authors propose that differences in self-customization procedures potentially influence (1) the product configuration favored, (2) the degree of decision difficulty in product customization, (3) the degree of satisfaction with the customized option, and (4) the degree of willingness to purchase. The authors examine these propositions in a series of studies that allow self-customization through the use of either a by-attribute or a by-alternative method. They show that consumers tend to choose an intermediate (compromise) option significantly more often when they customize a product using the by-attribute method than when using the by-alternative method. In addition, the by-attribute customization procedure leads to a lower level of experienced difficulty, greater satisfaction, and higher willingness to purchase the customized option than the by-alternative method. Finally, the decrease in experienced difficulty in the by-attribute customization method is not solely due to the reduction in information consideration but also due to less explicit trade-offs among competing characteristics. These results can aid marketing managers in designing mass-customization procedures.
Journal Article
Testing the Value of Customization: When Do Customers Really Prefer Products Tailored to Their Preferences?
Recently, researchers have paid increasing attention to the marketing strategy of customization. A key assumption is that customized products create higher benefits for customers than standard products because they deliver a closer preference fit. The prerequisite for this effect is the ability to obtain precise information on what customers actually want. But are customers able to specify their preferences that precisely? Several theoretical arguments raise doubts about this, implicitly challenging the value of customization. The authors conduct two studies in which they find that products customized on the basis of expressed preferences bring about significantly higher benefits for customers in terms of willingness to pay, purchase intention, and attitude toward the product than standard products. The benefit gain is higher if customers have (1) better insight into their own preferences, (2) a better ability to express their preferences, and (3) greater product involvement. This suggests that customization has the potential to be a powerful marketing strategy if these conditions are met. In the opposite case, firms willing to serve heterogeneous customer preferences need to adapt their customization systems in such a way that they explicitly address the customers' inability to provide valid preference information.
Journal Article
The \I Designed It Myself\ Effect in Mass Customization
Many companies offer websites that enable customers to design their own individual products, which the manufacturer can then produce to order. To date, the economic value of products self-designed using mass customization (MC) toolkits has been attributed to the two factors of preference fit achieved (which should be as high as possible) and design effort (which should be as low as possible). On the basis of literature on behavioral decision making, we suggest a third factor, namely the awareness of being the creator of the product design. In the course of five different studies, we provide experimental evidence that this \"I designed it myself\" effect creates economic value for the customer. Regardless of the two other factors, self-designed products generate a significantly higher willingness to pay. This effect is mediated by feelings of accomplishment and moderated by the outcome of the process as well as the individual's perceived contribution to the self-design process. These findings have important implications for MC companies: It is not enough merely to design MC toolkits in such a way that preference fit is maximized and design effort is minimized. To capture the full value of MC, toolkits should also elicit \"I designed it myself\" feelings.
Journal Article
3D food printing an innovative way of mass customization in food fabrication
About 15-25% of aging population suffers from swallowing difficulties, and this creates an increasing market need for food mass customization. Food industry is investigating mass customization techniques to meet individual needs on taste, nutrition and mouthfeel. Three dimensional (3D) food printing is a potential solution to overcome drawbacks of current food customization techniques such as lower production efficiency and high manufacturing cost. This study introduces the first generation food printer concept designs and functional prototypes that target to revolutionize customized food fabrication by 3D printing (3DP). Different from robotics-based food manufacturing technologies designed to automate manual processes for mass production, 3D food printing integrates 3DP and digital gastronomy technique to customize food products. This introduces artistic capabilities into domestic cooking, and extends customization capabilities to industrial culinary sector. Their applications in domestic cooking or catering services can not only provide an engineering solution for customized food design and personalized nutrition control, but also have potential to reconfigure customized food supply chains. In this paper, the selected prototypes are reviewed based on fabrication platforms and printing materials. A detailed discussion on specific 3DP technologies and their associate dispensing/printing process for 3D customized food fabrication with single and multi-material applications are reported. Lastly, impacts of food printing on customized food fabrication, personalized nutrition, food supply chain, and food processing technologies are reported and discussed.
Journal Article
A developed products’ families commonality Index based on variants’ similarity
Commonality indices used to assess the shared features of product families are crucial tools for benchmarking and redesigning these families. They also play a significant role in optimizing manufacturing systems by adding or removing components/modules to product platforms during delayed customization stages. Although several indices have been developed by researchers to measure commonality across product family variants, these indices are often only suitable for specific applications with specific configurations. In the present research, a new commonality index has been developed based on the similarity features of each pair of variants within a product family. The developed index is useful for clustering family variants into subfamilies, each with high components’ sharing ratio, facilitating the design of necessary product platform/s for delayed customization manufacturing systems. The results of applying this developed index to determine commonality across product family variants were compared with those obtained from several known commonality indices. The new index proved to be effective and sensitive in distinguishing between the commonalities of different product families. Additionally, the index was found to be effective in categorizing products into homogeneous families, grouping variants that share certain similarities and commonality features.
Journal Article
Incremental Learning Framework for Mass Personalisation of Skin-Care Products
This thesis presents a study that aims to develop a unified framework for the design of production systems for the mass personalisation of skin-care. It addresses the application of machine learning and more specifically supervised learning techniques in customisation of cosmetic formulations through personalising their ingredients. The proposed framework takes into consideration the limitations associated with data gathering through medical trials and proposes solutions to maximise knowledge acquisition from the valuable biomedical data. It also rectifies the shortfalls of the expert systems that are often used for personalisation of medical and dermatological products. The framework incorporates a main production unit that employs a supervised learning agent to gain knowledge through learning the connection between human skin-profile and ingredients of personalised skin-care products. After its training stage, the unit is able to produce personalised skin-care with an accuracy proportionate to its initial knowledge source. The thesis also introduces an adaptation unit to further improve on the generated skin-care formulations by incorporating the product feedback provided by the patients. To do so, a novel iterative feedback learning technique is introduced. This technique utilises an independent supervised learning agent to recognise the relation between the patients' skin-profile, formulations and provided feedback. It adjusts the levels of ingredients in the produced formulations to generate more effective versions and to acquire more favourable feedback from the patients. The framework introduces the concept of knowledge transfer from the adaptation unit to the main production unit to improve its knowledge of personalised skin-care products through incremental learning. The system built under this framework requires initial supervision and training. However, it is able to self-update by utilising patients' feedback after the initial training stage. The thesis introduces multiple task groups to evaluate modules of the proposed framework and the introduced novel techniques. The task groups show constant improvement in generated formulations by utilising the proposed adaptation module. Up to 32% improvement has been reported in the accuracy of the formulations only after receiving three feedbacks from the patients for their favourite skin-care products. Additionally, the impact of different types of skin-measurements on the generated formulations is investigated in this work.
Dissertation