Funny enough, after I just recently posted my article about why mass customization is so much bigger in Germany than in the US, a German online magazine went so far as to describe mass customization nearly normal in Germany today. Here a quick summary/ translation of the article:
The article begins by saying that in order to remain competitive, businesses have to make their customers’ dreams come true. While mass customization has been the exception in recent years, “it now seems to become fit for the masses”. “Personalized products have great potential, are becoming ever more popular with customers, and increasingly startups cover niches with it”
Examples: It then mentions Woonio (online configuration of furniture) as an example for an extraordinary application of mass customization, and states that mass customization in food seems to be really taking off (mentioning, not surprisingly, chocri, since we just tripled capacity with our recent move).
The article then quotes Prof. Piller (whose blog you should read too, by the way), who gives the example of Harry Potter as a very successful mass product, saying that there will always be successful mass products. Prof. Piller also mentions the complexity and costs in e.g. apparel and fashion companies that design clothing that they can not be sure that their consumers actually want them. Later in the article, Prof. Piller is quoted again, arguing that loyalty is increased when consumers design their own product online, due to higher switching costs once the perfect configuration is found.
In an outlook to the future, the author Susan Roenisch makes four major points:
1) 3D printing will become ever more powerful as it becomes cheaper
2) Mass Customization is Web 3.0 - instead of just interacting with customers, companies now integrate their customers into product development and production
3) Mass Customization is still a Long Tail matter - there will be room for mass as well as customized products
4) The limit of Mass Customization is to a large degree production scalability , which is caused by the fact that mostly small companies are successful in the space, but also enabled by the fact that small companies have more flexibility in their production
Food Mass Customization isn’t new at all (like mass customization in general) - for once, restaurants have been doing it all along, and fast food restaurants have began to do it in a more organized fashion (see Chipotle). However, it is new that you can now customize many products you would otherwise by in a store - ranging from cereal, to energy bars to beef jerky to chocolate. It is notable that while General Mills has experimented with mass customization as a big company, these mass customizers are all startups. In fact, everyone I’ve met in the field is not only young as a business, but also young as a person.
So what are the arguments for customizing a food product?
Most importantly, it is the taste - you can create something that tastes exactly how you want it to. Take the startup MeMarmelade in Germany - they mix a jelly according to your wishes, and that can include weird stuff like rum - and I tried it and it tasted great!
The second thing most people mention is freshness, something our friend Jonathan from elementbars confirmed - it matters whether you buy a product off the shelf where it had been sitting for months, or if it was just produced (hand-made) a few days ago.
Finally, if you’re health conscious, you can design the nutrition that is perfect for you. That is not only the case with obviously healthy foods like cereal and energy bars, but also applies to chocolate, to which you can add toppings with powers that you need - be it the Vitamin C of cranberries or the brain power of walnuts. If you like to take charge of balancing your diet, you should start taking charge of what you eat!
Food Mass Customization will become more important in the future. To quote two experts on the matter:
Dave Gardner told me on twitter: “There will be growth in food mass customization.”, and Frank Piller himself wrote: “Whenever I am asked what the next big trend in customization is, one of my answers always is food.” Note- he wrote that in 2007. And now we’re here! :)
