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.

The Phase 1 Questionnaire Results

The general outcome of this study in relation to McClelland’s (1961; 1987) and Snyder and Fromkin’s motives (1980) was similar to Zinkhan et al.’s study (1999). 74% of Zinkhan et al.’s statements were connected to these motives. This study’s outcome was higher with 85%. The remaining 15% of statements of this study were connected to the experiential and utilitarian need.

Comparison to Zinkhan et al.’s study (1999)

	Uniqueness (%)	Affiliation (%)	Power (%)	Achieve-ment (%)	Utilitarian (%)	Experi-ential (%)	Post-modernism (%)
Current study	38	3	21	23	10	5	/
Zinkhan et.al. (1999)	17	24	23	10	13.5	/	12.5

The more detailed comparison of the findings from this study with Zinkhan et al.’s results (1999) showed that the outcome of the individual motives was quite different. This needed to be investigated further in the interviews. Particularly the results for the need for uniqueness, the affiliation motive and the achievement motive were quite countrary. Another difference was that the experiential need was found to be of interest in this study and the category of Postmodernism was not adopted from Zinkhan et al.'s study.  
In the discussion of the questionnaire findings it became obvious that Zinkhan et al. had categorised certain responses of participants differently. Some responses that were classified under the achievement motive according to Schreier (2006) in my study were categorised under the affiliation motive by Zinkhan et al., which could be one reason why their outcome of the affiliation motive was so high and the achievement motive was much lower. However, this study had a high need for uniqueness outcome, which justified a low affiliation result as the need for uniqueness implies a need to seek differentiation from others and affiliation is the need to be with others. Furthermore, the need for power was relatively high in this study as well as in Zinkhan et al.’s study. However, this also serves as an explanation as to why the affiliation motive ranked so low in this study, since people try to stand out through risk-taking in the power motive and people try to avoid risk in the affiliation motive. There were also further responses that were categorised under the achievement motive in this study according to Schreier (2006) and under the need for uniqueness by Zinkhan et al. (1999), this could also explain the relatively high outcome of the achievement motive in this study.


Below is an illustration of the importance of the motives depending on the demographic cluster. The percentage is based on the number of statements in each group (n = number of statements).[1]

	Uniqueness Motive (%)	Power Motive (%)	Achievement Motive (%)	Affiliation Motive (%)	Utilitarian Need (%)	Experiential Need (%)
IF (n=18)	39	22	11	6	11	11
NIF (n=23)	39	17	35	/	9	/
IM (n=15)	13	47	27	/	13	/
NIM (n=21)	52	5	19	5	9.5	9.5

The categorisation of the motives into the demographic groups (Irish females, non-Irish females, Irish males and non-Irish males) showed that the uniqueness motive was most significant in the IF,NIF and NIM groups, whereas only the male group had a majority outcome for the power motive. Overall there were some visible differences between the groups.

To follow up on these findings interviews were deemed important in order to gather more in-depth information. Furthermore, the interviews were also necessary to explore the participants' understanding of Mass Customisation. More details will follow shortly.

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[1] In order to compare the findings of this study with Zinkhan et al.’s findings (1999) it was decided to calculate the total for each motive based on the number of statements (n=77). It was not based on the number of participants as it was possible for them to give more than one answer, which was then classified under more than one motive. Similarly, for the comparison of the motives between the demographic groups it was also decided to base the percentage on the number of statements, which varied between groups.

Consumer Motivations in relation to Mass Customisation - part 2

In addition to my last blog entry it should be said that Zinkhan et al.'s use of motives was based on the work of McClelland (1961; 1987) and Snyder and Fromkin (1980). However, the utilitarian need was added by Zinkhan et al. as it was deemed relevant by them.

During my research I discovered that there was a gap in the Mass Customisation literature as there was a lack of exploratory studies on customers’ motivations and attitudes towards mass customised products. This was what motivated me to research this topic further. Zinkhan et al.’s study was a very good foundation for my study as they used a projective technique in order to research hidden motives of people to create a website. In the first part of my research I attempted a similar study as Zinkhan et al. in order to find out what hidden motives existed in a Mass Customisation setting. I used a cartoon test to picture a person wearing a mass customised T-shirt and asked people to fill in the blank space of a speech bubble. The person wearing the customised T-shirt is thinking that she is very happy with this T-shirt. A second person says that she is wondering why the person in the customised T-shirt is so happy about wearing it. The third person's sentence starts with 'I guess it is because...'. At this stage people are asked to fill in their own thoughts on this. This was to give me an insight into the motives that played a role here. 

Other questions were also present on the questionnaire, i.e. such to determine the demographic information and questions on the internet usage of participants. More details on the results of the first part of this study will follow.  

Consumer Motivations in relation to Mass Customisation - part 1

Wow, it has been a while. I was so focused on my research that I didn't even get to update this Blog. However, the research has been successfully completed and I was able to make some interesting observations.

The article by Zinkhan et al. (1999), which I had mentioned in my last post was used as a basis for my research study. Their study was based on the US market, whereas mine focused on Europe. Furthermore, their study focused on people's motivations to create a personal website, whereas my study focused on people's willingness to customise products such as a T-shirt.
However, Zinkhan et al.'s use of motivational theories and the motives in general was reaching much further than the mostly initial studies of people's motives within the Mass Customisation field. Therefore, Zinkhan et al.'s study was deemed a very good starting point for this research. The motives that were at the center of this research were the need for uniqueness, achievement, affiliation, power and the utilitarian need.
Nevertheless, Zinkhan et al.'s study did not include one additional motive, which was deemed important in studies on Mass Customisation (Fiore et al. 2004; Schreier 2006): the experiential need.

In order to carry out the research on people's motivations to customise their products two methods were chosen: the questionnaire and semi-structured interviews.
Furthermore, the participants were divided into four groups: Irish females, non-Irish females, Irish males and non-Irish males. I was then able to compare the results from the four groups and make gender-specific or country-specific observations.

The results for this research study will follow in the next post.

Consumer Motives

In the process of reading papers on consumer attitudes I came across Zinkhan (1999) who had expanded McClelland’s theory of needs (1961). Zinkhan had carried out research on people’s motivations to create websites. This inspired me to look more into motivational theories and ultimately lead to my final research aim:
to investigate the motivations of consumers to use mass customised products.

McClelland’s theory consists of three motivational needs; the need for achievement, power and affiliation. Zinkhan’s paper developed this further by including Snyder and Fromkin’s (1980) need for uniqueness and also by adding another category, which he classified as Utilitarianism. For my own research I might have to add the experiential need, which has been mentioned in the Mass Customisation studies carried out on consumer’s attitudes (Fiore et al. 2004; Hunt 2006). The experience to design or create one’s own product is one of the main advantages of Mass Customisation, besides the uniqueness of the product.

For his research Zinkhan employed a cartoon test as a projective technique, which I have also adopted for my own research. Further elaborations on this will be made at a later time.

Mass Customisation and the customer

Well, it has been a long time since my last entry...and much has changed since then...
Something that emerged during my studies of the Mass Customisation literature is that most books and papers are actually written from an industry perspective. However, Mass Customisation is generally portrait as a customer-centric strategy.
What is interesting about this is that there are only a very limited number of articles about consumers and their view on Mass Customisation.
Most empirical studies about Mass Customisation are quantitative, and hence selective. I think in order to really understand customers, a qualitative study should be carried out instead. Therefore, I have decided to look at the motivations of people to use mass customised products and services.
There are a large number of papers and books about Mass Customisation. They include attempts to define the term, hints on which capabilities have to be present in a firm to use it as a successful strategy, case studies of firms trying out Mass Customisation and much more. It seems quite paradoxical that only a few researchers actually engaged in studying those who this is all meant for - the customer.
Therefore, I decided to look into this...