Modern shoppers no longer want to choose from a limited catalog of identical items; they want something that feels made just for them, reflecting their needs and tastes. However, many don’t want to pay more for this personalized experience or wait weeks for production and delivery. This has forced you to rethink your traditional manufacturing process.
That’s where mass customization comes in. It’s the powerful synthesis of personalization and scale, and it’s quickly becoming the new standard for many industries worldwide. From designing your own sneakers online to customizing complex designs like furniture, the benefits of mass customization are significant for transforming your sales effectively.
Right now, let’s dive into this blog for helpful insights!
What is Mass Customization?
Mass customization is the process of delivering products or services tailored to individual buyer needs while maintaining the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of mass production. In other words, it’s customization at scale, where flexibility, automation, and product customization tools work well to personalize offerings without sacrificing speed or quality.
4 Key Types of Mass Customization to Consider
While mass customization is known as “a single concept”, it takes lots of different forms:
- Collaborative customization
This is the most common form, where companies guide a customer through active product configuration. Customers explicitly choose and combine features, modules, layouts, and materials, or they can even expand with add-ons for their desired products. In fact, this type is widely used for furniture 3D configurators (e.g., sofa) or kitchen configurators, where users can generate complex designs with a high level of accuracy.
- Adaptive customization
The brand often offers a pre-built or standard product that users can later modify with simple customization options, such as colors, sizes, and finishes, for varied needs or uses. Shoe, T-shirt, and watch product customizers are all standard examples of this approach.
- Transparent customization
The business provides unique products without the customer's active involvement, often by using data science and analysis and tracking past behavior to personalize an offering. For example, highly personalized product recommendations are on an eCommerce site.
- Cosmetic customization
The product's presentation, packaging, or marketing message is tailored to the individual, but the core product itself remains the same, similarly to how POD works.
Key Benefits of Mass Customization
Mass customization offers powerful advantages for both the customer and the business.
For Customers
- Unique, perfect-fit products
Customers get an ideal product design that precisely reflects what they want: demands, dimensions, designs, and tastes, leading to higher functional and aesthetic satisfaction.
- Higher emotional connection
Offering personalized products at scale fosters a sense of ownership and personal investment, which can engage customers more in your products, services, and brands. Also, real-time updates make customers feel more supported when shopping online.
- Digital preview for reduced uncertainty
Thanks to innovations like 3D configurators for eCommerce with built-in AR/VR product visualization, customers can preview their custom product design in 3D, often right within their own environment, such as stores, kitchens, baths, living rooms, or office spaces. Apparently, this eliminates guesswork and ensures they clarify what they are ordering.
For Businesses
- Sales & Conversions Improvement
Visual product customization solutions, like 3D product configurators or 3D customizers, are generated to transform sales on product pages, not just for customer engagement. In fact, the interactive experience of designing a product significantly increases the likelihood of a purchase or a signup; as a result, you can get more orders and revenues.
- Reduced returns and errors
When a customer has digitally configured a product and seen it from every angle before ordering, the chance of “it didn’t look like I expected or the pictures” returns plummets. This benefit of mass customization is a game-changer for bulky and high-value products.
- Stronger brand differentiation
Mass customization capabilities are crucial in offering a superior buying experience, making your brand stand out from competitors who only sell standardized products. Also, product configuration software empowers you to learn from valuable data to refine product categories, identify popular feature combinations, and predict future demand.
Real-World Examples of Mass Customization
#1. Furniture & Home Design
3D configurators are considered the most renowned mass customization example in this use case. Customers can manipulate high-modular products, configuring dimensions, modules, materials, and complex layouts to have their desired furniture for their space.
Lundia, a Finnish company, has partnered with VividWorks for over a decade to offer customers a tailored shopping experience on custom cabinets utilizing the technology of a 3D configurator. Thanks to the rule-based configuration feature, customers have unlimited combinations while ensuring a high level of compatibility. Also, they can visualize their custom storage solutions with precise measurements in a true-to-life environment for better decisions.
On the other hand, salespeople use this digital product configurator to leverage the quality of consultations. “This is an extremely well-functioning, unique tool for design visits,” says Iris Hollo, Development Manager.
#2. eCommerce & Retail
The next application of mass customization is how digital customization tools support the retailing and eCommerce industries with real-time customization and 3D previews. Customers prefer customized apparel, displays, and shoes based on their preferences. As a result, brands can engage customers, increase AOV, and improve customer loyalty.
Supra Cabinets, a B2C company, decided to integrate a 3D Garage Storage Configurator into its WooCommerce store to simplify the sales cycle for custom storage solutions.
Thanks to the rule-based configuration, customers feel free to mix and match materials and modules for their desired designs without worrying about making errors. They can also visualize their cabinets in their actual garage storage to check how they match. From that, shoppers can understand the finalized orders without salespeople's support.
“The products really are selling better and with less assistance from us in the buying process for our customers because of the 3D configurator.”, says Zebastian, the company founder.
#3. Building Supplies & Modular Homes & Fixtures
Customization has become more essential in construction, building, and architecture. Homeowners and contractors use interactive product configurators or 3D room planners to select frame materials, window styles, or flooring layouts with accurate dimensions. They achieve the desired space and ensure that what’s visualized is precisely what’s built.
Sankyo Frontier, an established industrial modular home builder from Japan, launched a 3D Mobile Space Configurator so that users can create digital configurations for building frames. You can also use it to select options like walls, windows, and stairs, and then preview exterior and interior spaces in 360 degrees, offering a comprehensive understanding.
#4. B2B Manufacturing
The final use case today is how B2B manufacturers implement Visual CPQ solutions to deliver mass customization on gardeners, shelving systems, cabinets, and automotives.
The automation in displays, pricing, and quoting helps manufacturers dramatically shorten quote-to-order time, which is the most significant challenge in most B2B models. This solution can work well with eCommerce platforms like Shopify, WooCommerce, and Magento, as well as CRM and ERP systems, to deliver a smooth operational workflow.
BEDD, a B2B garden furniture company, used the VividWorks 3D configurator with built-in Visual CPQ to improve its sales of modular planters. This tool enables instant visualization, along with accurate pricing and weight details for each configuration. Consequently, buyers feel more confident in making decisions and closing deals faster.
“We have increased our sales to the professional segment, like building developers, contractors, and interior architects. They usually plan for large solutions and need all details in place before they place an order”, says Kristian Bye, CEO at BEDD.
Read customer success stories to learn how to start with product customization tools.
Nowadays, mass customization is considered the key innovation of business development. By combining personalization with scalability, its applications can easily satisfy customer expectations while maintaining operational efficiency. Book a demo with VividWorks to see how our professionals can help you turn customization into a competitive advantage.
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