Current Challenges for Mass Customization on B2B Markets

Abstract

Since Pine’s (1993) seminal work, much has been written about mass customization (MC). However, existing studies focus mainly on B2C markets, paying far less attention to B2B. This is striking because early examples of MC include business markets, which differ from consumer markets in many respects. For instance, business customers have always profited from individualized offers. MC is, therefore, not about increasing output diversity while maintaining cost advantages of mass production. It is rather the opposite, i.e., maintaining the established degree of individualization while moving from made-to-order production to more and more standardized (supposedly IT-based) co-creation process. Our chapter provides insight into the current challenges for introducing MC on B2B markets. It uses service-dominant logic as a framework of analysis. We analyze in particular to what extent the creation and perception of customer value differs between B2C and B2B markets. Avenues for future research are proposed.