Communities and Technologies 2013

"How User Communities Improve Mass Customization Productivity":
This presentation addresses the question how mass customization firms use communities to improve customer interaction and thus making mass customization more productive. Out of a pool of 118 mass customization firms and their communities, we selected representative companies (in terms of community size, - integration and openness) within an iterative approach for in-depth interviews. We found that communities can serve as levers for mass customization productivity, but companies seem to exploit them differently: Companies with a small customer base tend to limit communities merely on marketing communication to increase sales output. Providers with large and integrated communities realize a broader productivity potential from communities, exploiting them not only for increasing productivity output but for decreasing input factors in customer interaction processes (such as support in product configuration).