Enhancing the consumer-perceived benefits of a mass-customized product through its online sales configurator: An empirical examination

Purpose: This paper focuses on online sales configurators (SCs), also known as mass-customization toolkits, which enable consumers to self-customize their product solutions online. The paper aims to provide new insights into which characteristics of an online SC increase the consumer-perceived benefits of possessing a mass-customized product. Design/methodology/approach: Previous studies on mass customization, sales configuration, and learning psychology are used to develop the research hypotheses, which are tested by analyzing data from 675 configuration experiences from a convenience sample of potential consumers using 31 real online SCs for laptops/notebooks, economy cars, and sport shoes/sneakers. Findings: The paper finds support for the hypotheses that SCs with higher flexible-navigation, focused-navigation, and easy-comparison capabilities enhance not only the traditionally considered utilitarian benefit (UT), but also the consumer-perceived uniqueness benefit (UN) and self-expressiveness benefit (SE). Furthermore, consistent with the study’s hypotheses, SCs with higher benefit-cost communication and user-friendly product-space description capabilities are found to improve UT. The hypotheses that these two capabilities enhance UN and SE, however, are not supported. Post-hoc analyses suggest that the examined SCs are generally UT-centered and need improvement of their ability to communicate the UN and the SE a consumer could derive from the purchase of his/her configured product. Originality/value: While prior research has primarily been concerned with conceptually arguing and empirically showing that uniqueness and self-expressiveness are two additional sources of consumer value in business-to-consumer mass customization, this is the first empirical study that offers insights into which characteristics online SCs should have in order to draw from these two value sources.