Time Distance, Customization Mode and Personalized Product Satisfaction
WANG Yan-zhi1, LU Hong-liang2
1.School of Accounting, Tianjin University of Commerce, Tianjin 300134, China; 2.College of Economics and Management, Northeast Forestry University, Harbin 150040, China
Abstract:
The rapid development of information technology and the upgrade of consumption structure make personalized customization the choice of many people. How to improve the satisfaction of consumers for customized products has become a key concern of the merchants. From the perspective of consumers’ information representation, this paper tries to explore the impact of time distance and customization mode on the satisfaction of customized products. Using the inter-group experiment method, this research studies the customized notebook computers made by 236 undergraduates. The results show that when customized products are delivered in the near future, customization by alternative plans can bring higher satisfaction than that by attributes.In contrast, when the customized products are delivered in the far future, consumers are more satisfied with customization by attributes than that by alternative plans. The reason for such an effect is that the processing fluency plays a complete intermediary role in the relationship between time distance, customization mode and the satisfaction of individually customized products.