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Managing Customer Touchpoints and Customer Satisfaction in B2B Mass Customization: A Case Study
Managing Customer Touchpoints and Customer Satisfaction in B2B Mass Customization: A Case Study
Managing Customer Touchpoints and Customer Satisfaction in B2B Mass Customization: A Case Study
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Abstract
Most businesses agree that high customer satisfaction is important. Many are aware that it is a
prerequisite for success, but few measure and monitor it in a structured way, thus failing to improve it.
The aim of this article is to develop a customer touchpoint management tool that allows small and
medium-sized, B2B mass customization companies to measure, monitor, and improve customer
satisfaction. This case study identifies 48 customer touchpoints – classified in human, product,
service, communication, spatial, and electronic interaction – in a three-step approach: Employees and
existing customers were involved in identifying customer touchpoints, weighting them in terms of their
general importance, and assessing some specific customer touchpoint’s importance for customer
satisfaction. The results presented in this article suggest that not all existing customer touchpoints are
perceived to be important or relevant, and that employees and customers largely agree regarding
which customer touchpoints are most important. Customer touchpoints classified as human interaction
were found to be most important and have the highest importance for customer satisfaction.
Key words: Customer Touchpoints, Customer Satisfaction, Mass Customization, Printing Industry
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132 Aichner and Gruber
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Customer touchpoint management is a relatively young volume may be considered MC. One co-author of this
marketing tool that aims to find, assess, and control study is an employee of the company.
customer touchpoints by gathering feedback from The printing industry has largely adopted MC, using
customers [44]. Some of the main goals of customer highly sophisticated integrated systems to achieve
touchpoint management are enhancing customer economies of scale even if many orders are relatively
experience, increasing customer satisfaction, and small. The majority of companies in the printing
generating positive word-of-mouth (WOM) [20]. This industry fall under small and medium-sized
leads to the following three research questions (RQs): enterprises (SME) [45], as the company in this case
study.
RQ1: Which are the customer touchpoints in a small-
Over the past decade, the market structure changed
sized B2B mass customization company relevant
and is now being dominated by online printers such
for optimising customer experience?
as the Dutch company Vistaprint (about 1.7 billion
RQ2: Which customer touchpoints in a small-sized B2B EUR revenue in 2016) and the German company
mass customization company are most relevant Flyeralarm (about 330 million EUR revenue in 2016).
for customer satisfaction? These companies offer online sales configurators,
also referred to as mass-customization toolkits [46],
RQ3: What are the main reasons why satisfied
which are software applications designed to support
customers would recommend the company
customers in customizing the product according to
through word-of-mouth? their individual needs and preferences [47, 26].
These environments are characterized by minimal or
3. METHODOLOGY no human interaction. However, many business
To answer the three RQs presented in the previous customers require and demand personal interaction
section, a case study has been performed, following a with suppliers, for example, because it results in
three-step approach (see Figure 1). First, employees of improved communication and problem-solving [48].
the investigated company identified all customer Researchers argue that, especially in B2B, “as high-
touchpoints. Second, the importance of the identified tech as the world becomes, the need for human
customer touchpoints was determined from both an interaction is still a crucial element to all business” [49].
internal and an external perspective. Third, a customer Traditional printers such as the company assessed in
satisfaction survey regarding the most important this case study may therefore be able to offer consulting
customer touchpoints was carried out. All steps, and sales talks, which are not offered by its online
including data collection, were carried out between competitors. In fact, expert-oriented management is one
January and February 2017. of the main characteristics of the printing industry [50].
Although it is impossible for traditional printers to
achieve price leadership, many are offering at least the
same degree of customization, usually with a similar
degree of automation but with higher flexibility in
manufacturing and delivery, additional services
including human interaction, and comparable prices.
To be able to compete in an increasingly competitive
and globalized market such as the printing industry,
these SMEs must make sure to understand their
business customers and to guarantee high customer
satisfaction.
Customer satisfaction, which is the dominant customer
feedback metric, is used by both researchers and
practitioners [51, 13] and has been shown to increase
loyalty, keeping customers from switching to a
competitor [52].
Figure 1. Steps of the experiment
3.1 Step 1: Identification of Customer
This case study includes responses from both Touchpoints
employees and business customers of a small-sized
Italian printing house based in South Tyrol, a bilingual As part of the first step, all employees (N=9) were
(German-Italian) region in Northern Italy. The company asked to attend a meeting to identify all customer
has nine full-time employees and a yearly sales volume touch points, including human, product, service,
of about one million EUR. More than 94 % of the communication, spatial, and electronic interaction
company’s clients are business customers who (based on [10]).
generate more than 95 % of the company’s revenues. They were told what a customer touchpoint is and
The company offers customized products and solutions how to identify them using customer journey mapping
in terms of quality, material, delivery, project [53]. Independently from each other, every employee
management, and customer service at prices and lead had to imagine being a customer of the company and
times that are competitive with larger, mass production to note each customer touchpoint he may encounter
printing houses. More than 99.5 % of the business on a typical customer journey.
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134 Aichner and Gruber
3.2 Step 2: Weighting of Customer Touchpoints Based on Vogt and Johnson [58], we used 5-point
Likert-type scales with the following values to
In step 2, all customer touchpoints that were evaluate each item to measure customer satisfaction:
identified in step 1 were summarized and a very poor (1), poor (2), fair (3), good (4), very
questionnaire was prepared. We took a conservative good (5). In addition, the importance of each item
approach: even if a customer touchpoint was just had to be indicated using a 4-point scale ranging
mentioned by one single employee, it was included in from very unimportant (--), unimportant (-),
the second step. It did not make a difference whether important (+) to very important (++), which we
a customer touchpoint was mentioned once or more translated for data analysis to 0 %, 33 %, 67 %, and
than once in step 1. 100 %, respectively. All questions included an open-
The questionnaire used in this step included 48 ended question that gave the respondents the
customer touchpoints, which had to be weighted chance to further elaborate on the respective set of
based on their perceived relative importance on questions.
customer satisfaction/dissatisfaction. To avoid anchor An exception from this approach is the question
effects, 16 different versions of the questionnaire about WOM, where we first asked if the customer
were developed, with a random sequence of the 48 would recommend the company (yes/no). In the case
single items. of a positive response, he could choose from a list of
The survey participants were asked to select the 10 seven options (adapted from [59]), indicating why he
most important customer touchpoints and to would recommend the company. If he chose no, he
distribute 25 points depending on how important each was asked to indicate the reasons why he would not
one was perceived. The importance weights were recommend the company. Questions about
therefore derived directly by applying a constant- complaints were only shown to customers who
sum-scale approach [54], which is a common indicated that they actually filed a complaint, i.e., the
practice in research about customer satisfaction (e.g. survey respondent was redirected to the subsequent
[55]). At least one point had to be allocated to each set of questions if he did not file any complain with
of the 10 selected customer touchpoints, which the company in the past. The questions about
means each respondent had another 15 points to delivery were customized; i.e., customers who collect
express each customer touchpoint’s importance, the products themselves received a different set of
resulting in a maximum of 16 points allocable to one questions than customers who use a delivery service.
item by each individual survey participant. For The presentation of the question categories followed
example, one respondent may allocate 9x1 point and – as far as possible – the customer journey of a
1x16 points, while another may allocate 4x1, 3x2, typical customer.
1x3, and 2x6 points, both adding up to 25 points The online survey was tested for comprehension,
allocated to 10 customer touchpoints. functionality, and duration in a pre-test with eight
The survey participants (N=28) were both employees respondents. Some minor errors were identified and
(N=9) and customers (N=19). A total of 50 customers eliminated. The duration of about 5-10 minutes was
were selected randomly from both the customer data perceived to be short and acceptable.
base that includes 3,002 entries and from customers For the participation in the survey, we invited all
visiting the production site. 23 customers agreed to business customers, which generated an annual
participate in this step. However, four questionnaires turnover of more than 500 EUR in at least one of the
had to be excluded from the analysis, e.g. because three solar years from 2014 to 2016. We identified
the participant selected less or more customer 328 customers fulfilling this condition; 156 with a
touchpoints than requested, resulting in a customer turnover of 500-1,000 EUR and 172 with a turnover
response rate of 46 %. of more than 1,000 EUR.
3.3 Step 3: Customer Satisfaction Survey Before the invitation to the online survey was sent
out by email, all customers with a turnover
Finally, an online-based questionnaire was exceeding 1,000 EUR were informed by phone.
developed to measure customer satisfaction as well After one week, a reminder was sent by email.
as the relative importance attributed to the 10 most Participants who started filling in the questionnaire
important customer touchpoints identified in step 2. In could come back at any time and complete the
addition, we included five random customer remaining questions.
touchpoints that were considered to be less important After two weeks, 121 customers participated and the
or not important at all to further validate the results of survey was concluded. Three incomplete
step 2; i.e., the importance attributed to each questionnaires were excluded, resulting in 118
customer touchpoint. We decided to limit the number responses and a response rate of 36.9 %. More
of customer touchpoints as shorter questionnaires information about the participants of the survey are
are easier to fill in and usually result in higher provided in Table 1. The relatively high number of
response rates [56]. While for some customer CEOs participating in the study may be explained by
touchpoints we used single item scales, others were the fact that many of the company’s clients are
measured using multiple items of product and service SMEs.
attributes that are important for customer satisfaction,
such as cordiality of staff [57] and price–performance
ratio.
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136 Aichner and Gruber
respondent had to allocate 25 points to what he consulting. Considering that the respondents had to
considered the 10 most important customer choose 10 customer touchpoints and allocate at least 1
touchpoints. More points equal a higher relative point to each of those, the percentage of available
importance. points allocated to consulting equals 19.0 %. While it
was ranked first by customers, it is ranked fourth in the
Table 3. Weighting of customer touchpoints by employees internal analysis. The second most important customer
(internal) and customers (external), ordered by combined touchpoint is the product itself (17), which received
perceived importance (N=28). Letters (H, P, Se, C, Sp, E) 10.4 % of all and 16.3 % of the allocable points.
indicate customer touchpoint categories Figure 2 shows the relative importance of the top10
Internal External Combined customer touchpoints as perceived by employees and
Customer
(N=9) (N=19) (N=28)
touchpoint customers. It is shown that both groups of respondents
pts. % pts. % pts. % agree in principle, but that the internal weighting of the
H, Se: (03) 22 9.8 63 13.3 85 12.1
top10 items is higher on average. Four of the top5
P: (17) 27 12.0 46 9.7 73 10.4
customer touchpoints are human interaction, including
H: (10) 24 10.7 33 6.9 57 8.1
H: (02) 25 11.1 25 5.3 50 7.1
consulting (03), project meetings (10), complaints (02),
H: (07) 17 7.6 26 5.5 43 6.1 and outgoing phone calls (07). Outgoing phone calls
Se: (20) 9 4.0 30 6.3 39 5.6 are cold calls, follow ups, and calls to thank the
E: (34) 6 2.7 27 5.7 33 4.7 customer for their business.
H: (12) 9 4.0 22 4.6 31 4.4
H, Se: (11) 18 8.0 12 2.5 30 4.3
H: (06) 12 5.3 16 3.4 28 4.0
Se: (19) 5 2.2 23 4.8 28 4.0
P: (14) 10 4.4 17 3.6 27 3.9
Se: (21) 2 0.9 23 4.8 25 3.6
E: (48) 7 3.1 18 3.8 25 3.6
H: (08) - - 16 3.4 16 2.3
C: (30) 3 1.3 13 2.7 16 2.3
H: (09) - - 14 2.9 14 2.0
P: (15) 7 3.1 6 1.3 13 1.9
H, Sp: (01) - - 12 2.5 12 1.7
E: (35) 7 3.1 5 1.1 12 1.7 Figure 2. Relative importance of the top10 customer
H: (04) - - 8 1.7 8 1.1 touchpoints in % as perceived by employees (internal) and
P: (16) 3 1.3 4 0.8 7 1.0 customers (external) (N=28)
C: (22) 2 0.9 2 0.4 4 0.6
C: (27) 1 0.4 3 0.6 4 0.6 Overall, human interaction appears to be the most
E: (41) 3 1.3 1 0.2 4 0.6 important, with a total of 53.4 % of all points allocated to
P: (13) - - 3 0.6 3 0.4 11 customer touchpoints. The second most important
C: (29) 2 0.9 1 0.2 3 0.4 category is service, with 29.9 % of all points. It is
Se: (18) - - 2 0.4 2 0.3 important to note that two highly relevant touchpoints –
Sp:(32) - - 2 0.4 2 0.3 consulting (03) and sales talk (11), which account
E: (44) 2 0.9 - - 2 0.3 together for 16.4 % – are included in both human and
C: (25) - - 1 0.2 1 0.1 service interaction. The category with third most points
C: (26) - - 1 0.2 1 0.1 allocated is product, accounting for 13.4 %, followed by
C: (28) 1 0.4 - - 1 0.1 electronic interaction with 11.0 %, communication with
E: (47) 1 0.4 - - 1 0.1 4.3 %, and spatial with 2.0 %. Spatial interaction
H: (05) - - - - - - includes company tours (01), which accounts for 1.7 %
C: (23) - - - - - - and is also classified as human interaction.
C: (24) - - - - - -
Nine out of 15 electronic interaction customer
C: (31) - - - - - -
touchpoints did not receive a single point in neither the
Sp:(33) - - - - - -
E: (36) - - - - - -
internal nor the external analysis. Another three
E: (37) - - - - - - received four or less points, and only two made it into
E: (38) - - - - - - the top15: Email (34) and the company website (35).
E: (39) - - - - - - Likewise, both employees and customers do not
E: (40) - - - - - - attribute a high degree of importance to communication
E: (42) - - - - - - efforts. In fact, not a single customer touchpoint from
E: (43) - - - - - - this category is found in the top15. The highest ranked
th
E: (45) - - - - - - communication item is sponsoring (30) on the 16
E: (46) - - - - - - position.
Total 225 points 475 points 700 points The result is a customer touchpoint management tool
that includes the 10 most important customer
The customer touchpoint that was rated the highest in
touchpoints. For the final step of the analysis, these
terms of relative importance is consulting (03), which is
top10 customer touchpoints identified in step 2 (see
classified as both human interaction and service.
Table 3) will be considered.
12.1 % of all available points were attributed to
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Aichner and Gruber 137
4.3 Importance of Most Relevant Customer were given options, while speed and flexibility were
Touchpoints for Customer Satisfaction (Step 3) specified by four different respondents.
In this section, we present the results of the customer Table 4. Reasons why satisfied customers would recommend
satisfaction survey amongst 118 business customers the company through WOM (N=118)
who were asked to indicate the relative importance of Mentions %
15 customer touchpoints on customer satisfaction. As Friendliness 99 83.9
described in the methods section, five less important or Product quality 94 79.7
unimportant customer touchpoints were added to the
Reliability 91 77.1
survey in addition to the 10 most important ones
identified in step 2 (see Table 3). Trust 82 69.5
An exception is the customer touchpoint WOM (12), Price–performance ratio 58 49.2
which was not measured in terms of relative importance Warmth 46 39.0
on customer satisfaction, but regarding which factors Expectation exceeded 10 8.5
lead to positive or negative WOM. Although the goal Speed 2 1.7
was to assess both positive and negative WOM, Flexibility 2 1.7
negative WOM could not be evaluated as 100 % of Other 4 3.4
survey respondents indicated that they would
recommend the company.
As shown in Figure 3, each one of the top10 customer 5. DISCUSSION
touchpoints is considered to be highly influential on We followed a three-step approach (see Figure 1) to
customer satisfaction, with values of 85.6 % to 91.1 %, develop (steps 1 and 2) and experiment (step 3) a
with the exception of delivery (20). The importance for customer touchpoint management tool in a small-sized
customer satisfaction of this customer touchpoint was B2B mass customization company. Step 1 was to
rated with 83.5 % from customers who use a delivery identify customer touchpoints. In step 2 all customer
service (20a), and 75.3 % by those who collect the touchpoints were weighted in terms of their relative
products themselves at the production facility (20b). perceived importance to find the most important ones.
The additional customer touchpoints included in the In step 3 the individual customer touchpoint’s
survey, i.e. press proof (21), the company website (48), importance for customer satisfaction was assessed.
the Facebook page (35), packaging (16), and fax (38) The findings presented in the previous section lead to a
were given significantly less importance, with values number of interesting and relevant implications for both
ranging from 44.5 % to 73.0 %. These percentage research and practice.
values were calculated by attributing a value of 0 %,
33 %, 67 %, or 100 % to the responses of 118 survey 5.1 Implications for Research
participants who indicated the importance of the specific Products were found to be the second most important
customer touchpoint on a 4-point scale. customer touchpoint and have the highest importance
for customer satisfaction. This substantiates previous
findings in the literature, which showed that – besides
interaction quality – product quality is the main driver of
customer satisfaction [43]. Except for products, all
customer touchpoints in the top5 and seven of the
top10 are human interactions, which supports the
postulated need for human interaction in B2B [49].
As shown in Table 3 and Figure 2, the internal and
external analysis regarding the perceived importance of
customer touchpoints is relatively consistent. As
discussed, the company’s employees were asked to
imagine the typical customer journey; i.e., they had to
put themselves in the shoes of their customers and to
Figure 3. Importance of customer touchpoints for customer first identify and then weigh the respective customer
satisfaction, as attributed by survey respondents (N=118) touchpoints. As only two of the top10 customer
touchpoints would vary if the internal and external
The customer touchpoint products (17), which was analysis would be considered separately, our findings
measured in terms of product quality and price– suggest that an internal analysis only or an external
performance ratio, was found to have the highest analysis only rather than both an internal and external
importance for customer satisfaction. The company’s analysis may be sufficient to identify the most important
Facebook page (35) is considered to be least important. customer touchpoints. This can be relevant if
Table 4 finally refers to WOM (12) and shows why researchers face time or budget restrictions, or lack
customer would recommend the company. Survey access to one or the other group.
respondents could select multiple options and/or add In step 2, employees and customers were asked to
additional reasons. The first seven items in Table 4 attribute the relative importance of each customer
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138 Aichner and Gruber
touchpoint. The results of the customer satisfaction generated with actions that are not related to the
survey (step 3), i.e., the relative importance of specific company’s products, such as being friendly, reliable,
customer touchpoints on customer satisfaction, clearly and trustworthy.
reflect the ranking of step 2. Interestingly, this indicates
that the importance attributed to customer touchpoints 5.3 Limitations and Future Research
correlates with the importance for customer satisfaction. Developing a customer touchpoint management tool
In other words, when employees and/or customers are and assessing the current situation is just the first step
asked about the importance of a customer touchpoint, of customer touchpoint management [44]. Further steps
they may imply its importance for customer satisfaction, include the optimisation of the tool to continuously
which reinforces the results of studies underlining the improve customer experiences [44], which has not been
general importance of customer satisfaction (e.g. [6]). done in this case study.
Another downside regarding our methodology is that we
5.2 Implications for Practice
included exclusively existing customers. The needs and
Every customer touchpoint can play a determinant role preferences of potential new clients were not
when it comes to customer satisfaction or considered. This does not limit the validity of our
dissatisfaction. However, businesses are limited in results, but needs to be taken into consideration, e.g.
terms of human and capital resources, and therefore when the results are used by start-ups or by established
have to set strategic priorities and allocate their budget businesses that want to win new customers.
to some activities. A customer touchpoint analysis can With regard to reasons why satisfied customers are
help in identifying the most relevant customer using WOM to recommend a company (see Table 4),
touchpoints and give valuable insights that help to take the responses may be biased by the specification of
strategic decisions. With this knowledge, the seven items. Assuming, for example, speed and
management can systematically focus their efforts on flexibility were given as additional options, it can be
improving interaction quality, information quality, and assumed that more than just a few customers would
other factors such as response speed, if applicable. The have chosen them. Therefore, these results may be
more important and/or the higher the importance for helpful to assess the relative importance of the seven
customer satisfaction of a specific customer touchpoint, predetermined options, but not as an exhaustive list of
the more time, effort, and financial resources should be factors influencing WOM.
invested in improving it. Previous findings highlight that the nature of the product
The customer touchpoints identified in step 1 and impacts the perceived importance of customer
weighted in step 2 allowed to develop a management touchpoints [13]. Thus, the findings from this study may
tool that helps in measuring, monitoring, and improving not be applicable to SME from other industries. Future
key customer touchpoints over time. In the future, the research should replicate this research and extend it to
company can regularly repeat step 3; i.e., conducting a variety of other industries to find differences and
the customer satisfaction survey, to assess if similarities, which may be applied to a wider range of
implemented changes led to an increase or decrease in B2B MC companies.
customer satisfaction. Although this study assesses a company that can
Using our three-step approach, it is also possible to clearly be defined to use a MC strategy, we did not
identify less important customer touchpoints. The assess some features that are considered to be typical,
company assessed in this case study offers 15 e.g. online product configurators. Although this may
customer touchpoints classified as electronic limit the contribution of this case study to MC literature,
interaction, including different social media channels it is justified as long as the company operates in this
(see Table 2). However, they appear to be rather specific way, i.e., offering mass customized products
unimportant. Besides email (34), only the company but no online product configurator.
website (47) and the Facebook page (35) seem to be We also found that all customers participating in the
relevant. In step 3, the latter was rated to have the customer satisfaction survey would recommend the
lowest importance for customer satisfaction, which company. Even though all companies work towards the
leads to the question of whether companies should offer goal of having as many satisfied customers as possible,
a wide range of electronic interaction or focus on a this situation does not reflect the average business
limited number of tools and social media. Companies landscape. We do not believe our results are influenced
should critically review the range of this type of by any self-selection bias; i.e., that satisfied customers
customer touchpoints, considering time and money agreed to participate in the survey while dissatisfied
spent to maintain each channel. It is better not to be customers did not, because previous studies showed
present on a specific platform rather than not being that both highly satisfied and highly dissatisfied
active, which means to provide up-to-date content and customers are equally likely to respond to customer
not just responding to user comments [60]. satisfaction surveys [61]. However, the fact that only
With an average value of 91.1 %, products (11) have satisfied customers participated in the survey may limit the
been shown to be the most important customer generalizability of the results. Further research with less
touchpoint that determines customer satisfaction. In satisfied and dissatisfied customers should be carried out
addition, almost 80% of customers recommend the to find possible differences regarding the impact of specific
company through WOM if they are satisfied with the customer touchpoints on customer satisfaction as
product quality. However, positive WOM can also be indicated by satisfied versus dissatisfied customers.
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Aichner and Gruber 139
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Apstrakt
Većina kompanija se slaže da je visoko zadovoljstvo korisnika veoma važno. Mnogi su svesni da
zadovoljstvo korisnika predstavlja preduslov za uspeh, ali samo mali broj kompanija ga meri i prati na
struktuiran način, zbog čega ne uspevaju da ga unaprede. Cilj ovog rada je da razvije upravljački alat
koji omogućava malim i srednjim B2B preduzećima koja se bave kastomizovanom proizvodnjom da
prilikom dodira sa korisnicima mere, prate i unaprede njihovo zadovoljstvo. Ova studija identifikuje 48
tačaka dodira sa korisnicama koje su podeljene u sledeće grupe: međuljudska interakcija, interakcija
kroz proizvode, usluge i komunikaciju, kao i prostorna i elektronska interakcija. Istraživanje je
zasnovano na pristupu koji sadrži 3 faze: zaposleni i postojeći korisnici su bili uključeni u proces
identifikacije tačaka dodira sa korisnicima, zatim su ih merili u smislu njihovog značaja i na kraju su
procenjivali važnost određenih tačaka dodira sa korisnicima za njihovo zadovoljstvo. Rezultati ukazuju
da nisu sve identifikovane tačke dodira sa korisnicima važne, kao i to da se zaposleni i korisnici u
velikoj meri slažu oko onih tačaka dodira koje zaista jesu najvažnije. Utvrđeno je da su tačke dodira sa
korisnicima koje su svrstane u grupu međuljudskih interakcija najvažnije i da imaju najveći uticaj na
zadovoljstvo korisnika.
Ključne reči: tačke dodira sa korisnicima, zadovoljstvo korisnika, kastomizovana industrijska
proizvodnja, grafička industrija
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