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.