by Fan Bi
16. April 2010 13:19
There is to be said a trend of mass-customization coming that will forever change the relationship between consumers and producers. The value proposition it's offering is why would you get something the same as everyone else when you could just have it individually-made to your preferences. Mass-customization's competition is mass-production, and these are the three main reasons why it is still king:
1. People only want a limited amount of choice. And that's not to say consumer behavior won't change in the future, but consumers are fairly intolerant of the paradox of choice, which basically states that choice brings us happiness but too much choice makes decision-making miserable. Mass-customization companies have to invest a tremendous amount into customer-development and user empathy to understand what customers want to have choice in, and what they fundamentally want chosen for them.
2. Mass-customization in most cases is ineffectively positioned and priced. For mass-customization to be effectively communicated against mass-production it can be a Starbucks cup of coffee compared to a Dunkin', but it cannot be a whole coffee machine. There are mass-customization companies effectively building a pricing premium through branding and service, but it's the branding and service people want to pay extra for, not necessarily that it's customizable. Mass-customization ultimately still has to be a great value proposition to get scale.
3. Talking of scale, does anyone even know mass-customization exists? Mass-production is dominant because it has distribution, and inevitably this will take some years and a lot of dollars and mouths to spread awareness. To join the movement, there's a twitter hash-tag, #CCCR, which stands for Co-Creation Custom Revolution.
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