TY - JOUR
T1 - The interplay between customer participation and difficulty of design examples in the online designing process and its effect on customer satisfaction
T2 - Mediational analyses
AU - Chang, Chia-Chi
AU - Chen, Hui Yun
AU - Huang, I. Chiang
PY - 2009/4/1
Y1 - 2009/4/1
N2 - In the current consumer-centric economy, consumers increasingly desire the opportunity to design their own products in order to express more effectively their self-image. Mass customization, based on efficient and flexible modulization designs, has provided individualized products to satisfy this desire. This work presents an experiment employed to demonstrate that customer participation leads to higher satisfaction. Specifically, the increment in customer satisfaction due to participation is greater when an easy example is provided than when either no example or a difficult one is provided. Additionally, self-congruity plays a mediating role on the customer participation-satisfaction relationship, and this mediating effect varies across different levels of the design example provided in the design process. When an easy design example is present, customer participation has a direct effect on satisfaction, in addition to the indirect effect of self-congruity. When a difficult example is provided, customer participation does not have incremental effects on either self-congruity or customer satisfaction. Finally, when no design example is shown to customers, contrary to our expectation, participation still enhances customer satisfaction due to an increased sense of self-congruity.
AB - In the current consumer-centric economy, consumers increasingly desire the opportunity to design their own products in order to express more effectively their self-image. Mass customization, based on efficient and flexible modulization designs, has provided individualized products to satisfy this desire. This work presents an experiment employed to demonstrate that customer participation leads to higher satisfaction. Specifically, the increment in customer satisfaction due to participation is greater when an easy example is provided than when either no example or a difficult one is provided. Additionally, self-congruity plays a mediating role on the customer participation-satisfaction relationship, and this mediating effect varies across different levels of the design example provided in the design process. When an easy design example is present, customer participation has a direct effect on satisfaction, in addition to the indirect effect of self-congruity. When a difficult example is provided, customer participation does not have incremental effects on either self-congruity or customer satisfaction. Finally, when no design example is shown to customers, contrary to our expectation, participation still enhances customer satisfaction due to an increased sense of self-congruity.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=64749099628&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1089/cpb.2008.0170
DO - 10.1089/cpb.2008.0170
M3 - Article
C2 - 19250014
AN - SCOPUS:64749099628
SN - 1094-9313
VL - 12
SP - 147
EP - 154
JO - Cyberpsychology and Behavior
JF - Cyberpsychology and Behavior
IS - 2
ER -