The impact of mass customisation practices on performances: an exploratory study of Chinese manufacturers

Using a large-scale survey in China, this study identifies a set of manufacturing practices based on the framework proposed by Zipkin (2001), and builds and tests a model describing the relationship between mass customisation practices and firm performances. The results demonstrate that the mass customisation practices can bring benefits to manufacturers in terms of both cost reduction and product/service quality improvement, which in turn boost financial performance. Moreover, we find that the practices of elicitation, flexibility in design, advanced manufacturing technology (AMT), just-in-time (JIT) supply chain and integrated logistics information system (ILIS) play different roles in business performance improvement. To be specific, the elicitation and ILIS are very important to operational performance in terms of cost and product/service quality. The flexibility in design and AMT are beneficial to cost reduction only. However, the JIT supply chain has no impact on neither cost nor product/service quality in China.