During the opening session of the upcoming MIT Smart Customization Seminar, my colleague Dominik Walcher and I also will present the first results of a very recent global benchmarking study: The Customization500 (Yes, I was inspired for this title by NESTA's Open100).
In the last weeks, we (actually: we and a large team of more than 20 great research associates) evaluated more than 500 mass customization offerings that can be purchased online (and in addition about 200 online configurators of companies where you can configure a product or service online, but then not order it online, e.g. automotive companies). This is, to our knowledge, the largest study evaluating the state of the art of mass customization on the internet. For each configuration site, we got more than 200 data points and evaluations.
This first stage of data gathering will be complemented by a company survey plus consumer surveys on selected offerings. As a result of this study, we hope for a better understanding of the state of mass customization & personalization in the practice, a large collection of "best" and "promising" practices, and also an overview of technologies used for online configuration.
I will definitely report more about the results of this study in the coming months (and in case you are a company that has been part of the benchmarking, just be patient: You will get a mail with your evaluation during the next weeks!). For first results, wait for the opening session of the SCS 2010!
Can't wait!
Posted by: Carmen from chocri | May 18, 2010 at 02:07 PM