“Do consumers want to design unique products on the internet? A ...

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With an overview of the his<strong>to</strong>ry and principles of MC now complete, the next section will look <strong>to</strong> critically evaluate the proposed benefits of MC cited in the literature. 2.1 Why MC? If there really is nothing simple about MC (Hart 1995) then why is this <strong>to</strong>pic worthy of such academic and business interest? Teresko (1994:46) believes “If you can sell everything you make, mass cus<strong>to</strong>misation is irrelevant”. This like Harts visionary definition may be correct in an absolute, transcendent and idealistic way however in reality it is flawed. While <strong>to</strong>day a business may sell everything that it produces, only in a market monopoly are sales liable <strong>to</strong> be static and not subject <strong>to</strong> competition from rival businesses. While <strong>to</strong>day you may sell everything you make, a competi<strong>to</strong>r moving <strong>to</strong> MC and offering the cus<strong>to</strong>mer increased choice may irreversibly change this. Just because you are selling you may not be satisfying cus<strong>to</strong>mers or selling profitably and fast enough <strong>to</strong> reduce potential revenue sitting in s<strong>to</strong>ck. It also doesn’t address the fact that by utilising MC you are co-<strong>design</strong>ing with the consumer which will allow you <strong>to</strong> always sell everything that you make and as suggested by empirical research (see Piller et al 2004 for an overview), sell at a premium price. According <strong>to</strong> the literature a business’ choice not <strong>to</strong> pursue MC and encourage cus<strong>to</strong>mer involvement may be diminishing. Cus<strong>to</strong>mers now appear <strong>to</strong> be demanding more influence (Prahalad & Ramaswamy 2004) with an “uninterrupted trend <strong>to</strong>wards Adam Fletcher – Do <strong>consumers</strong> <strong>want</strong> <strong>to</strong> <strong>design</strong> <strong>unique</strong> product on the internet. 2006 18
individualization” (Piller & Muller 2004:1) which is making the homogeneous market a thing of the past (Hart 1995). MC supports heterogeneity of requirements by allowing the consumer a tailored experience and where possible a tailored product or service. The consumer does not have <strong>to</strong> pick from a range of uniform, average <strong>products</strong> (Lee et al 2000). Once the cus<strong>to</strong>mer has seen just how responsive a manufacturer can be, the relationship it is suggested becomes impervious <strong>to</strong> competi<strong>to</strong>rs (Pine 1993; Teresko 1994). It is acknowledged that information acquired by the supplier during the MC experience when used correctly will represent a considerable barrier <strong>to</strong> entry for competi<strong>to</strong>rs (Peppers et al 1999). However, for the relationship <strong>to</strong> be considered impervious there would have <strong>to</strong> be a link between satisfaction and loyalty (repurchase intention). While the focus of this paper is not <strong>to</strong> test that particular assumption it is worth mentioning that this is still an assumption and the strength of the link between satisfaction and repurchase intention/loyalty is still open <strong>to</strong> debate (see Seiders et al (2005) for more background on this or Iacobucci et al (1994) for an interesting discussion of this as one of the many “satisfaction fables”). For this reason statements about an impervious relationship are met with scepticism. Just as, at a time of limited resources a manufacturer may opt for a more profitably client, the client’s loyalty is multifaceted with manufacturer responsiveness being just one fac<strong>to</strong>r. To the cus<strong>to</strong>mer when asked if they are interested in MC, the idea of getting <strong>to</strong> produce exactly what they <strong>want</strong>, would no doubt be a tempting proposition. Problems arise when its time <strong>to</strong> create this product and articulate <strong>to</strong> the manufacturer their individual Adam Fletcher – Do <strong>consumers</strong> <strong>want</strong> <strong>to</strong> <strong>design</strong> <strong>unique</strong> product on the internet. 2006 19
Page 1 and 2: “Do cons
Page 3 and 4: Abstract Mass Custo</strong
Page 5 and 6: Chapter 1 Introduction, Term Defini
Page 7 and 8: mass produced system.” Adam Fletc
Page 9 and 10: The Internet itself could be viewed
Page 11 and 12: With this renewed interest and opti
Page 13 and 14: 2.0 Literature Review (5000) This c
Page 15 and 16: Table 1: Description of Production
Page 17: Lampel and Mintzberg’s (1996) hav
Page 21 and 22: necessary discounting to</s
Page 23 and 24: significant value add or a way of g
Page 25 and 26: Figure 3: MC approaches used by VMs
Page 27 and 28: eceived less focus in the literatur
Page 29 and 30: - Access a communities’ publicly
Page 31 and 32: Some studies have proven that often
Page 33 and 34: In this approach the custo<
Page 35 and 36: Figure 5: “Conceptual framework s
Page 37 and 38: 3.0 Research Strategy & Methodology
Page 39 and 40: general. It can help to</st
Page 41 and 42: 3.3 Research Methodology It is sugg
Page 43 and 44: Chapter 4 Findings & Discussion “
Page 45 and 46: shows the different categories and
Page 47 and 48: commonly posted comments were givin
Page 49 and 50: community member adds a comment bel
Page 51 and 52: “This is pretty rough right now,
Page 53 and 54: “other” also responded in a way
Page 55 and 56: Surprisingly and contradict
Page 57 and 58: 4.5 Sawhney and Prandelli (2000) st
Page 59 and 60: customers
Page 61 and 62: Figure 10: Adapted Conceptual Frame
Page 63 and 64: Chapter 5 “Armed with new connect
Page 65 and 66: 5.1 Research Conclusions & Limitati
Page 67 and 68: 5.3 Recommendations The most obviou
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Chapter 6 References & Appendices
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participation in network and small
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Control. Vol. 15, N.4, June 2004, 4
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Von Hippel, E. (1986) “Lead users
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1. Less than once a week 2. Once or
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17. Do you design
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30. Please rate from 1-10 (10 being
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The Virtual Community of Threadless
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