mass customization (MC) toolkits, which help customers to play a larger role in the ... fictitious website providing customers with the possibility to customize a ...
IS MORE ALWAYS BETTER? HOW DIFFERENT MASS CUSTOMIZATION TOOLKITS AFFECT CUSTOMERS’ PROCESS ENJOYMENT Today, researchers and managers widely agree that engaging customers in product development processes in the form of customizing their products, increases both company and customer value. By customizing their products, customers advance to co-designers and, thus, directly contribute to marketing metrics such as brand attachment (Mugge, Schoormans, & Schifferstein, 2009), loyalty (Bijmolt et al., 2012), or customer satisfaction (Hoyer, Chandy, Dorotic, Krafft, & Singh, 2010), and financial metrics, such as increased willingness to pay (Franke & Schreier, 2010). In turn, companies invest a considerable amount of resources into mass customization (MC) toolkits, which help customers to play a larger role in the value creation process. Existing research on customization demonstrates that MC toolkits help customers to come up with their own ideas, which makes the customization experience more enjoyable (Füller et al., 2012). As such, the degree to which customers enjoy the MC process itself should significantly influence the utility customers derive from taking part in such activities (e.g., Franke & Schreier, 2010). MC toolkits, however, differ in the extent to which they allow customers to design product functionalities, product aesthetics, or both (i.e. toolkits that enable customers to design both functional and aesthetic product attributes). We refer to these different toolkits as functional toolkits, aesthetic toolkits, and supreme toolkits. However, the impact of different MC toolkit types on process enjoyment has not received adequate attention yet. Investigating the difference between these toolkit types is of significant importance as they differ in their unique characteristics as well as in the value consumers might derive from them. We experimentally investigated the impact of different types of MC toolkits on customers’ process enjoyment and the moderating role of customers’ ability to customize in the customization process. In each experiment, we presented respondents with a screenshot of a fictitious website providing customers with the possibility to customize a product in terms of functional and aesthetic product attributes. We asked respondents about their process enjoyment with one of the following toolkits. The functional toolkits enabled participants to customize the product in terms of one aesthetic product attribute and three functional product attributes. The aesthetic toolkits enabled customers to customize the product in terms of one functional product attribute and three aesthetic product attributes. The supreme toolkits enabled customers to customize the product in terms of three functional and three aesthetic product attributes. In experiment 1, we asked respondents about their process enjoyment with one of the three toolkits using a watch and an electric toothbrush as products. In experiment 2, we additionally investigated the moderating effect of participants’ ability to customize, using a beanie as product. All experiments were conducted among students from an Austrian University. In experiment 1, 359 participants (mean age = 24.34, 224 female) participated in experiment 1, which used a 3 (toolkit: functional vs. aesthetic vs. supreme) x 2 (product: watch vs. electric toothbrush) between-subjects design. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the six experimental conditions. For the watch, a one-way ANCOVA with toolkit (functional vs. aesthetic vs. supreme) as the independent variable, product involvement as the covariate and process enjoyment as the dependent variable revealed a significant main effect for toolkit (F(2,178) = 24.83, p < .01). The effect of the covariate was not significant (F(1,178) = .552, p > .10). Pair-wise comparison of means revealed that process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 3.96) was higher than process enjoyment with the functional toolkit (M = 2.46, p < .01). However, process enjoyment with the supreme toolkit (M = 4.37) was not significantly higher than process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 3.96, p > .10). Results for the electric toothbrush replicated the findings. A one-way ANCOVA
revealed a significant effect for process enjoyment (F(2,173) = 17.50, p < .01), as well as a significant effect for the covariate product involvement (F(1,173) = 6.76, p < .05). Pair-wise comparison of means showed that process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 4.12) was higher than process enjoyment with the functional toolkit (M = 2.96, p < .01). However, process enjoyment with the supreme toolkit (M = 4.56) was not significantly higher than process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 4.14, p > .10). In experiment 2, 205 participants (mean age = 24.59, 133 female) participated in experiment 2, which used a 3 (toolkit: functional vs. aesthetic vs. supreme) x 2 (ability to customize: low vs. high) between-subjects design. Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three experimental conditions (functional vs. aesthetic vs. supreme toolkit). The second design factor, ability to customize, reflected a measured variable. A median split was assessed in order to assign for participants with high (M = 5.53) and low ability to customize (M = 3.28). To investigate the interactive effect of toolkit and ability to customize, we performed an ANOVA with type of toolkit and ability to customize as independent variables and process enjoyment as dependent variable. Results revealed significant main effect for toolkit (F(2,180) = 14.64, p < .01) and ability to customize (F(1,180) = 29.84, p < .01). Most important, the interaction effect between toolkit and ability to customize reached significance (F(2,180) = 3.07, p < .05). Comparison of means revealed that for participants with a high ability to customize, process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 4.92) was significantly higher than process enjoyment with the functional toolkit (M = 3.56, p < .01). Further, process enjoyment with the supreme toolkit (M = 5.59) was moderately higher than process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 4.92, p < .10). For participants with a low ability to customize, process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 3.63) was not higher than process enjoyment with the functional toolkit (M = 3.10, p > .10), and process enjoyment with the supreme toolkit (M = 3.84) was not higher than process enjoyment with the aesthetic toolkit (M = 3.63, p > .10). The results are summarized in figure 2. This research shows that MC toolkits have to be designed carefully in order to suit the customer base and to maximize process enjoyment. More specifically, our results highlight the critical role of giving customers the opportunity to customize a product’s visual appearance (i.e., geometry, color, material, texture) according to their personal preference. An additional positive effect of giving customers the opportunity to customize product functionalities on process enjoyment was only found for customers with a high ability to customize. References Bijmolt, T. H. A., Leeflang, P.S. H., Block F., Eisenbeiss, M., Hardie, B. G. S., Lemmens, A., & Saffert, P. (2010). Analytics for customer engagement. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 341–356 Franke, N., & Schreier, M. (2010). Why customers value self-designed products: The importance of process effort and enjoyment. Journal of Product Innovation Management, 27(7), 1020–1031. Füller, J., Matzler, Hutter, K., & Hautz, J. (2012). Consumers’ creative talent: Which characteristics qualify consumers for open innovation projects? An exploration of asymmetrical effects. Creativity and Innovation Management, 21(3), 247-262. Hoyer, W. D., Rajesh, C., Dorotic, M., Krafft, M., & Singh, S. S. (2010). Consumer cocreation in new product development. Journal of Service Research, 13(3), 283–296. Mugge, R., Schoormans, J., & Schifferstein, H. (2009). Emotional bonding with personalised products. Journal of Engineering Design, 20(5), 467–476.
