Interrelationships between Systems design and Customer Value

نویسنده

  • Marianna Sigala
چکیده

Online travel firms exploit current ICT advances for developing mass customization (MC) capabilities and addressing the needs of the sophisticated travellers. However, studies investigating MC in services and specifically in tourism are limited. By adopting a customer-focused approach, this paper addresses this gap by analysing the following issues: a) the ICT and product dimensions that online firms can customise for developing and implementing different MC models; and b) the customer value and benefits provided by the different MC models. After reviewing and illustrating the interrelationships of studies coming from the fields of customer value, MC and IS design, the author proposes a customer value based framework for developing MC models. The applicability and practical implications of this framework are demonstrated by analysing the MC practices of three online travel cyberintermediaries. Finally, the paper summarises the formulation of research propositions investigating the influence of users’ characteristics on the customer value and benefits sought by MC practices and on the design of the IS platforms supporting MC services. DOI: 10.4018/jisss.2010040104 International Journal of Information Systems in the Service Sector, 2(2), 48-69, April-June 2010 49 Copyright © 2010, IGI Global. Copying or distributing in print or electronic forms without written permission of IGI Global is prohibited. cific individual needs (Sigala, 2005): increased online price and product transparency; the use of customer recommendation and information personalisation systems by online firms that allow customers to participate in and customise processes such as product development, design and production (e.g., Dell, Travelocity.com dynamic package possibilities). Moreover, as the disposable income, the time and flexibility of travellers’ increases, demand for pre-packaged and static packaged tours decreases. Moreover, an increasing number of travellers are nowadays willing: to afford little more money for buying personalised tourism services; to spend some time to plan and organise their own vacations by assembling and selecting their own tour package components; and to create their own flexible trip itineraries. For addressing individuals’ requests, travel information service companies have traditionally followed a niche marketing strategy by focusing on specific travellers and offering them differentiating travel products-services at premium prices (e.g., specialised travel agents). However, current competition prevents firms from charging for product customisation, while ICT advances and tools (e.g., collaborative filtering) enable firms to adopt flexible operating procedures that reduce the cost of product customisation at mass production output levels, i.e., mass customisation operating models (MC). Indeed, recent research provides evidence of a positive relationship between increased ICT investments and a firms’ capability to produce a large product variety (Gao & Hitt, 2004). In e-tourism, MC practices are mainly reflected on the wide adoption and development of personalised travel services and dynamic packaging (Anite, 2002; Sigala & Christou, 2005). However, despite the business necessity of MC in tourism, research in MC in tourism, as well as in services in general, is scarce (Peters & Saidin, 2000). Indeed, most of the MC studies have primarily focused on investigating the operational and technological capabilities of mass customisers specifically within the manufacturing sector (Papathanassiou, 2004). Thus, limited academic debate and evidence are currently provided identifying the MC models and analysing how the latter can be designed for delivering enhanced customer value. This is because previous studies on MC typologies have adopted a business value chain and process centric approach for categorising MC models (e.g., Spira, 1996), as MC implementation demands the integration and participation of customers in value chains. However, when MC implementation is centred around value chains rather than customer value, customer adoption of MC is not guaranteed (Piller et al., 2004). Previous MC typologies also implicitly assume that the success of MC increases as customer involvement in the value chain increases. Nevertheless, this assumption does not consider whether customers are also willing, have the competencies and/or perceive and get any value by participating in value chains and becoming co-producers of personalised services. Therefore, there is a need to adopt a customer value centric approach for identifying and analysing how to develop MC models that can deliver customer value and benefits. This paper aims to develop an overall framework that can be used for identifying, developing and categorising different types of MC models from a customer value centric approach. By focusing on MC implementation in the context of online travel information service companies, the study does not only address the gaps of MC within the service sector, but it also investigates a major competitive necessity in etourism. To achieve this, the study first analyses the drivers, the concept and the application of MC in general and then, it focuses on MC in the context of online travel and tourism information services. As a result, the paper identified and reviewed the various types and dimensions of MC models and then, it proposed a customer value centric framework for analysing the MC models and customer values delivered by online travel firms. When MC is implemented over the Internet, its supporting information system (IS) platform needs to be appropriately designed in order to provide users with different MC functional, utilitarian and emotional values (Franke, & Piller, 2004; Oon & Khalid, 2001; Kamali & 20 more pages are available in the full version of this document, which may be purchased using the "Add to Cart" button on the product's webpage: www.igi-global.com/article/mass-customisation-modelstravel-tourism/43563?camid=4v1 This title is available in InfoSci-Journals, InfoSci-Journal Disciplines Business, Administration, and Management. Recommend this product to your librarian: www.igi-global.com/e-resources/libraryrecommendation/?id=2

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تاریخ انتشار 2016