Form postponement from a decision-making perspective: theoretical development and construct definition

Form postponement has been widely acknowledged as one of the main avenues to mitigate the adverse effects of product proliferation or customization on operational performance. As it often happens with long debated concepts, however, the proposed definitions of form postponement sometimes display substantial differences. Consequently, a shared answer to the question as to what form postponement is and a shared framework that relates form postponement to other concepts, both antecedents and consequents, do not exist, which hampers the advancement of scientific knowledge. This paper aims at moving a step forward towards a more precise definition of form postponement in the domain of tangible products. A first result on this way is that form postponement can be referred to physical activities or decisions concerning product differentiation. A constitutive and an operational definition of form postponement with a decision-oriented focus are then proposed.