This is a continuation of my blog post summarizing the Forrester Report on Mass Customization.

The recent report on Mass Customization by Forrester’s J.P. Gownder gives companies considering to enter the mass customization space some valid recommendations. To start with, it repeats the advice by Prof. Piller to be careful when designing the solution space. The report compares it to the work of a museum curator - there are thousands of wonderful pieces of art, but which ones do you expose to the public? Similarly, there are thousand of beautiful fabrics, but which one do you let your users pick from to create customized shirts?

Second, Forrester reminds budding customization companies to empower customers to be successful in the design process. That can be a very user friendly and very flexible configuration engine, or it might be a guided process from standard product to customized version.

Third, the report places special emphasis on the value a consumer can derive from a mass customized product: Does it solve a real customer need? Are there social benefits (e.g. self expression, or a sense of accomplishment)?

Fourth, Forrester reminds companies interested in mass customization to keep analyzing and predicting what consumers want. A great example is the “thumbs up” and down rating that you can give songs on Pandora - with that small tool, Pandora keeps learning about you and is able to provide you a better product. Also, new features and changes in the solution space fall into this category.

Finally, Forrester looks into the future a bit further and suggests that the mass customization of the future will be more social, physical (interestingly enough, Forrester suggests technology such as Microsoft Kinect to play a role here), mobile, intimate (in short: even more personalized), embedded (i.e. change products more dramatically), platform-based (e.g. shared technology between all customizers) and co-created (using the data from customization to produce both more meaningful solution spaces and standard products).

The report “Mass Customization Is (Finally) The Future Of Products” can be found here: http://www.forrester.com/rb/Research/mass_customization_is_finally_future_of_products/q/id/58967/t/2?src=RSS_2&cm_mmc=Forrester-_-RSS-_-Document-_-24

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