What’s Mass Customization Strategies or Business Personalization?
In this age of competitive modern technology, mass customization has become an important market trend. It can be applied to extrinsic characteristics such as marketing and product design, as well as to intrinsic elements such as service and products. Take the Dell company, for example, pioneer of custom-configured computers, which allows its customers to choose the processor, memory, storage, and other equipment of their computer.
So, why are so many companies interested in mass personalization? It is because it can benefit them in far-reaching ways! Here are four key strategies of mass customization that can improve your company’s competitiveness.
1. Mass Customization Strategies: Differentiate Yourself from Your Competitors
Mass customization requires three main actions on the part of companies:
– Identify product attributes according to which customer needs may vary and ensure that the aspects of the product are customizable.
– Reuse or reorganize existing production (adapt production to customization)
– And finally, help customers recognize or create solutions to their own requests (create a space where customers can share their feedback in order to know their needs).
These actions allow companies to differentiate themselves from their competitors, both in their internal organization and in their external image with customers.
2. Mass Customization Strategies: Capitalize on Your Economies of Scale
Mass customization benefits companies by providing them with cost advantages obtained through their scale of operation, with the cost per unit of production decreasing with increasing quantities produced. Companies can thus produce in bulk while controlling their costs: the costs related to personalization operations must certainly be taken into account, but are optimized.
3. Mass Customization Strategies: Ensure Fast Delivery
Mass customization remains “superficial” for the company because the vast majority of the production chain remains unchanged: only a few elements visible to the consumer are really customizable. For example, Coca-Cola continues to mass-produce its iconic glass bottles while simply adapting its printer to print custom labels to customer messages, which are then glued to the glass bottles. This change in the production line does not have a significant impact on the delivery time of the product to customers.
4. Mass Customization Strategies: Improve the Consumer Experience
Mass customization makes it possible to customize products according to the customer’s tastes. He can then choose his colors, his design, or his favorite ingredients. This approach can lead to a form of “premiumization” of the product, where it is valued by the consumer thanks to additional attributes. These “premium” or “luxury” versions are often built through the creation of a specific packaging, packaging, or limited series. Mass personalization here has a direct effect on the brand image as a whole.
How Mass Customization Strategies Can Change Your Marketing
Only 15% of companies have a set-up plan when it comes to customizing… What about yours?
Today, implementing a marketing personalization strategy within your company does not only mean the implementation of new technology but a new way of thinking about all your marketing actions such as:
- Having a specific vision
- Optimizing each communication in itself rather than confronting the crowds;
- Focusing on your customers instead of your products;
- Creating as much content as you have customers instead of single general content that caters to everyone
We are in the age of ease. This means that a customer should not put a lot of effort into getting a personalized and adapted service. That’s why adopting a personalization strategy affects several aspects of your marketing. Digital channels are the first and easiest to personalize, whether SMS, email, web, or mobile notifications.
The first impact will definitely be the multiplication of content possibilities for a single communication.
From the perspective of treating the individual (not the segment to which they belong), we create as much content as there are customers. A good example, very simple, is that of sending an email to anyone who has abandoned a shopping cart, putting in this email the items that were there. How to get there? By connecting the E-commerce site to the one who sends an email, with automated marketing and most likely dynamic content or queries on relational tables. Let’s say that at this level, it is not the technological limits that prevent organizations from doing so, since the solutions are available.
Whether on banners or portions of your website, a social media promotion, or an advertisement on a third-party website via Google Ads, your promotional messages should also be different depending on the behavior of your contacts.
That’s good since there are tools capable of managing the assignment of the right visuals, with the right offers to the right contact, according to their behavior.
Mass Customization Strategies: Personalization At the Point of Sale
The advancement of marketing technologies also makes it possible to extend personalization at the point of sale, in real-time.
Let’s take geofencing, for instance, a technology that can track customers extremely precisely (unlike geolocation). With this type of data, you know where your customer is in your store, in which row they are, and in front of which product they have stopped. You can, at this time, push him an offer on his phone to encourage him to buy the product in question. Facial recognition is also increasingly used by companies to do real-time personalization.
The Westfield Shopping Centre in London is a good example: its camera system uses facial recognition to profile each person, including age, gender, and even mood. The system then displays targeted advertisements on digital billboards located in the mall.
Another company that performs personalized marketing extremely well in a physical location is Disney World, which unifies its Magic Band with its Mobile My Disney Experience app with the goal of providing a memorable experience for its guests.
A personalized experience, in the long run, will aim to use data to offer real value to your customers, whether through more traditional communication channels, or emerging ones that enhance the overall experience.
Mass Customization Strategies: Conclusion
Hence, mass customization/personalization combines the best of two worlds: mass production that minimizes production costs, and customization to provide customers with a unique product/service. The combination of these 4 advantages allows companies to “shake up” their competitors and their competitive landscape because differentiation, economies of scale, operational speed, improved customer experience, and brand image are vectors of an increase in market share. Once integrated into a market, competitors often have to adapt to mass customization.
How could your company position itself in the market with mass customization? What if we explored this production strategy together?
Also see: https://creatibuzz.com/8-tips-for-designers-to-overcome-a-creative-block/
