Apparel Brands' Implementation and Customers' Expectation of Mass Customization

Apparel goods can be customer-oriented in the extreme and the apparel industry is one of the most customer-centered industries that should maximize customers' satisfaction. Recently, mass customization, a customer-centered system is widely discussed in the apparel industry to provide consumers with new, differentiating, distinctive, yet personalized products. The purpose of this study is to provide useful insights for apparel brands' mass customization(hereafter, MC) implementation by comparing the apparel brands' current status with consumers' expectation. One hundred apparel brands' practitioners and 116 consumers were surveyed in this research. First, we found that, on the basis of the five stages of MC presented by Pine(1993), apparel brands' MC stages were identified. Then, customers' expectation levels were examined according to the five stages. When compared the gap between the customers' expectation level and the apparel brands' implementation, consumers' expectation of MC was significantly higher than the implementation level by apparel brands for the stage 2(customized products creation), the stage 5(modular production). Second, by conducting a factor analysis with the scales measuring the MC activities of the five stages, apparel brands' current MC strategies could be classified as 'mass customized strategy', 'quick response strategy', 'MOT(moment of truth) customized strategy', and 'individualized service strategy.' Apparel brands showed significant differences in mass customized strategy, quickresponse strategy, and MOT customized strategy according to their product characteristics. Finally, consumers' expectation level of MC strategies was significantly different by their characteristics such as shopping orientation.

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