FAILING TO FOLLOW YOUR OWN STAR: PREFERENCE FORMATION, DEVIATION, AND THE NEGATIVE INFLUENCE OF COMMUNITY-FEEDBACK ON SELF-DESIGNABLE PRODUCTS

摘要

Companies in various industries of fer consumers the possibility of individually tailoring a product according to their personal preferences and past research provided evidence that the dominant driver of the customer value increment of fered by mass customization (MC) systems is related to consumers expression of uniqueness and individuality (Franke and Schreier 2010). However, recent research underlined the role of social influence processes during these customization procedures (Franke, Keinz, and Schreier 2008; Moreau and Herd 2010) and companies such as Lego and Threadless of fer not only highly sophisticated toolkits for individual user designs but also motivate consumers to post their design within a company-led community and to share and revise designs with other users. Thus, the previously isolated context of customization systems is changing and the integration of user communities is growing rapidly (Franke, Keinz, and Schreier 2008). This is of particular importance as it has been shown that also anonymous online recommendations may strongly influence the preferences as well as behavior of consumers (Chevalier and Mayzlin 2006; Godes and Mayzlin 2009).