Mitchell M. Tseng and Frank T. Piller

14	Modeling Consumer Behavior in the Customization Process

Sri Hartati Kurniawan, Mitchell M. Tseng and Richard H. Y. So
Department of Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong

The essence of being customer centric is to provide only and exactly what each customer wants at the right time. The process to reach this objective is the configuration process. During configuration a consumer can choose different components and assemble them together to a specific product. With this new way of acquiring products, it is predicted that consumer behavior will change as well. This chapter presents a new approach to understanding consumer behavior using the living system theory. The paper follows the living system theory to explain consumer behavior by specifying its components, relations, and organization. The (traditional) marketing models rooted in psychological research have made many assumptions about human behavior, for example, the human brain is assumed to be similar to the computer brain and the processing of information is assumed to be symbolic processing. Living system theory is seen as an alternative solution. It has the capability of explaining customer behavior as a collection of components and their organization. Thus, it may become possible to emulate the consumer buying process by explaining this process as a collection of components and their organization. We will discuss this approach for the configuration process of a mass customization system. A case study is presented in order to illustrate the concept.