Many companies offer websites that enable customers to design their own individual products, which the manufacturer can then produce to order. To date, the economic value of products self-designed using mass customization (MC) toolkits has been attributed to the two factors of preference fit...

In this article, the authors propose that the canonical customer-toolkit dyad in mass customization (MC) should be complemented with user communities. Many companies in various industries have begun to offer their customers the opportunity to design their own products online. The companies...

This research identifies a surprising downside of crowdsourcing: Those participants whose ideas are not selected disengage from the brand after having learned about the outcome. From this perspective, crowdsourcing might better be framed as a communal effort rather than a competition.

Firms and governments are increasingly interested in learning to exploit the value of lead user innovations for commercial advantage. Improvements to lead user theory are needed to inform and guide these efforts. In this paper we empirically test and confirm the basic tenants of lead user...

Lead users are proposed as a valuable resource for marketers in terms of the (1) development, (2) adoption, and (3) diffusion of new products. We present the first consumer study to provide evidence that the latter two suggestions are justified. First, we find that lead users demonstrate...