How the inhabited space helps consumers customize good products

Abstract

Consumers could derive benefit from the preference fit through the online customization. However, consumers’ preferences are often ill defined and sometimes unstable. Many methods are discussed to solve this problem in online customization. In this research, the authors propose a new method to examine whether the inhabited space would have different influences on consumers’ perception of preference fit in an online customization context. Also, the mediating role of psychological distance between the consumers and the products is examined. Using subjects from a Chinese university, they report a study involving real customization tasks on a well-known Chinese customization website. The study arrives at the conclusion that the configurator with a higher inhabited space will help the consumers to customize more preferred products, which would be partial mediated by the psychological distance between the consumers and the customized products. The results would offer insightful guidelines to customization websites.