The Phase 2 Interview Results - part 3


Coming back to the main focus of this study, people’s motivations to purchase mass customised products, the interviews were used to explore this in more detail. It was found in the questionnaires that the motives identified by Zinkhan et al. (1999) a decade earlier in their U.S.-based study are also relevant in this European study. However, the order of relevance of these motives was found to be different. As the uniqueness motive ranked highest in the questionnaires and affiliation lowest, and Zinkhan et al.’s findings (1999) showed a high need for affiliation and a lower need for uniqueness, I assumed that the products that the studies focused on were the major reason for the different outcomes. Zinkhan et al. explored the creation of a personal website, whereas the cartoon in the questionnaire of my study was showing a customised T-shirt. This assumption was confirmed by the interview findings. The participants were asked:
1. In connection to a customised product such as a T-shirt, would they value the uniqueness and would they personalise to show that they belong to a certain social group. Affiliation was not significant here and most participants considered the uniqueness of a product as very important, which was connected to the fact that it was co-created.
2. This part was relating to the creation of a personal website and participants were asked, if they would do it to express their individuality and for social interaction. In the contrary the uniqueness motive was not important here, but similarly to Zinkhan et al.’s result affiliation turned out to be quite important, in particular for social networking sites.
Furthermore, it appeared that the need for uniqueness and the affiliation motive showed signs of being connected to the age of the participants for products such as T-shirts. The importance of belonging to a social group as well as the non-commercial customisation of products was more important for the participants when they were teenagers.

The need for affiliation generally had a very low outcome in the questionnaire phase of this study, which was a major difference to Zinkhan et al.’s research (1999). However, the need for affiliation came up at a different stage in the questionnaires as salesperson interaction and as anonymity in the buying process. This was investigated further in the interviews. The anonymity of the buyer was not found to have a big influence on the participants, but the salesperson interaction was again found to be important. Irish females appeared more optimistic about buying online, which they also did more frequently than non-Irish females. The enquiry on salesperson advice also showed that Irish females had a more negative opinion of sales staff compared to non-Irish females. Therefore, affiliation as salesperson interaction was found to be more significant for non-Irish females, but not as much as in the questionnaires. It was emphasized in the literature review that customer relationship management is important for Mass Customisation (F. Piller “The Importance of Customer Centricity” 2004). Future research should therefore be undertaken into the affiliation motive and the influence of salesperson interaction as a motivation for people to buy mass customised products online or in a shop.

More results will follow in the next blog.

The Phase 2 Interview Results - part 2


One major research focus of this study was the participants' experience with Mass Customisation and their understanding of the concept, which I elaborated on in my last blog entry. Another focus of this study was the participants' willingness to pay for these customised products.

The interviews revealed that the average that participants were willing to pay more for customised products was 37.5%. This result lies significantly below some previous willingness to pay research. For example, Franke and Piller (2004, Journal of Product Innovation Management) found in their study that people who were able to customise their watches using a design toolkit were willing to pay 100% more for this product. Similarly, Schreier's studies (2006, Journal of Consumer Behaviour) on customised cell phone covers, T-shirts and scarves also revealed an average willingness to pay 100% extra for these products. 

One possible explanation for the low result in this study could be that only female participants where included in the interviews. This was due to their low outcome of  previous customisation of products as it was found in the questionnaires. On the other hand male participants were not only more involved in customisation, the questionnaires also revealed that they had customised more expensive products than the female participants. This means that the average willingness to pay could have been higher, if male participants had been included. Furthermore, this was a relatively limited study as the number of participants in the interviews was quite low. 

The literature review, which was carried out before the data was gathered showed that the advance in technology played a major role in the development of Mass Customisation. Particularly the internet is an important medium in the marketing process as well as the creation of customised products by the customer using toolkits. Therefore, it was seen as important to consider the online activity of the participants in this study. In this connection Dellaert and Dabholkar (2009, International Journal of Electronic Commerce) explored the effect of complimentary online services on people's perceptions of the product outcome, which was found to be of a positive nature. These online-services included online salesperson advise, a visualization tool that showed customers their finished product and free product adaptation (such as a flexible return policy). In this study the idea was used to find out, if it had any effect on customers' willingness to purchase mass customised products. First it should be said that it was found in the questionnaires that the Irish females were the only group that preferred shopping online compared to shopping in a store. In the interviews this result was confirmed with the Irish participants being the more frequent internet shoppers. For them the visualisation tool was slightly more important, whereas the flexible return policy was more important for the non-Irish group. However, due to the small number of participants in the interviews this cannot be generalised and further research is required. Nevertheless, the online salesperson interaction was found to be less significant for both groups. It is certainly of interest to explore the reason for this outcome in the future.      

The Phase 2 Interview Results - part 1

In order to further explore the findings from the questionnaires, a number of interviews were also carried out. Some of the partakers from the first phase of the study were asked to participate in this. However, it was decided to only concentrate on female participants here. The questionnaires revealed that 44% of all participants had previously bought mass customised products. The number for the female participants was much lower than for the male participants. Furthermore, male participants had customised more expensive products than females. Particularly the non-Irish females had a very low outcome for customisation of products. During the interviews a surprising result emerged. For the Irish and non-Irish females the number of previous customisation rose to 92%. In the discussion section this was attributed to the fact that the participants were told to include commercial as well as non-commercial customisation. At this point I was trying to isolate participants' understanding of Mass Customisation and it emerged that it differed between participants as some saw customisation in everything they put their mark on, i.e. by applying stickers to a product. It further showed that people’s ideas of the concept were based on their previous experiences.
It was also found that the participants' understanding of Mass Customisation differed from the industry’s perspective on the concept. To explain this last point: the classification by Gilmore and Pine in their ‘Four Faces of Mass Customization’ (2000) that was introduced earlier was used here to categories participants answers. It was found that almost all interview participants had customised a product commercially or non-commercially by applying only some degree of customisation, i.e. by customising a greeting card or a T-shirt, which falls under the cosmetic approach by Gilmore and Pine (2000).  Nobody had actually customised the entire product, which would be the collaborative approach or pure customisation. The discussion within the industry is concerned with the question whether the cosmetic approach can be called Mass Customisation and some argued that only the collaborative approach is really Mass Customisation (Zipkin “The Limits of Mass Customization” 2001). This research result showed that at least in this group customisation had not yet advanced towards the collaborative approach and the participants’ understanding of Mass Customisation was much broader.

In the course of this study some research was also carried out in connection to willingness to pay for mass customized products and participants' attitudes towards online shopping. The results for that part of the study will follow shortly.