As you know, I’ve been wondering a lot why mass customization is so much bigger in Germany than in the US, and my blog post (see link) tries to answer that question. Recently, another idea came to my head: Could it be that Germans are culturally more interested in creating their own?

What brought this idea to mind was that I had noticed for quite a while now that Americans and Germans have very different ways of building houses. In the US, houses are built by companies, who plan the houses and then sell them during and after the construction. It’s quite efficient, and the producers have all sorts of data on what the majority likes, which they use when they build many and many of these houses. 

In Germany, people tend to buy a piece of land and then proceed to build the houses themselves - sometimes with similar companies in a turnkey project, sometimes with many different contractors. What’s different about the German approach is that the house buyers/ builders are very involved in the creation and its details: Even if it’s a turnkey construction, they usually pick everything from floor tiles to door handles. 

Now, to throw this crazy idea out: Could it be that Germans just like to be more involved in the the creation of the “stuff” they consume? Could it be that Germans experience a form of co-creation in several aspects of their lives and are thus more likely to (a) get excited when a design-your-own website launches and (b) more likely to launch such a business themselves?

How much of the proliferance (at least relatively) of mass customization in Germany is due to

• Cultural Aspects
• Funding Environment
• Coincidence
• Better Awareness in a Smaller Market
• Less Mass Production

?

Would love your thoughts!