Is mass customization simply a high level of service?
If you provide great service, it’s going to be a customized service. It’s already ubiquitous in some industries, and you don’t even realize it. FedEx, the post office, and UPS all do it. How is it that I can put a package outside my front door and have it be at another front door halfway across the country for $10? They have a modular system that allows them to move all packages — and my specific package — to a specific address….Other examples are Dell and LensCrafters. More industries need to figure out how to do it. But just as mass production never got rid of craft production, mass customization won’t completely replace mass production. Q: One example of mass customization that seems ripe for success is grocery shopping. With the Net, customers can place their orders online and have them delivered to their homes. In your introduction to the book, Markets of One: Creating Customer-Unique Value through Mass Customization, [co-edited with James H. Gilmore, Harvard Business School P
