Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Mass Customization and Customer Centricity: In Honor of the Contributions of Cipriano Forza 1st ed. 2023 Edition Thomas Aichner (Editor) full chapter instant download
Mass Customization and Customer Centricity: In Honor of the Contributions of Cipriano Forza 1st ed. 2023 Edition Thomas Aichner (Editor) full chapter instant download
https://ebookmass.com/product/pursuit-of-honor-lexy-timms-autumn-
gaze/
https://ebookmass.com/product/convivencia-and-medieval-spain-
essays-in-honor-of-thomas-f-glick-mark-t-abate/
https://ebookmass.com/product/neo-colonial-injustice-and-the-
mass-imprisonment-of-indigenous-women-1st-ed-edition-lily-george/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-palgrave-handbook-of-german-
idealism-and-poststructuralism-1st-ed-2023-edition-tilottama-
rajan/
The Grace of Being Fallible in Philosophy, Theology,
and Religion 1st ed. Edition Thomas John Hastings
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-grace-of-being-fallible-in-
philosophy-theology-and-religion-1st-ed-edition-thomas-john-
hastings/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-palgrave-handbook-of-the-
history-of-surgery-1st-ed-2018-edition-thomas-schlich/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-creators-of-inside-money-1st-
ed-edition-d-gareth-thomas/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-palgrave-handbook-of-
international-cybercrime-and-cyberdeviance-1st-ed-edition-thomas-
j-holt/
https://ebookmass.com/product/the-end-of-analysis-the-dialectics-
of-symbolic-and-real-the-palgrave-lacan-series-1st-
ed-2023-edition-mohamed-tal/
Edited by
Thomas Aichner · Fabrizio Salvador
Mass Customization
and Customer
Centricity
In Honor of the
Contributions of
Cipriano Forza
Mass Customization and Customer Centricity
Thomas Aichner • Fabrizio Salvador
Editors
Mass Customization
and Customer
Centricity
In Honor of the Contributions
of Cipriano Forza
Editors
Thomas Aichner Fabrizio Salvador
South Tyrol Business School Operations and Technology Management
Bolzano, Italy IE Business School
IE University
Madrid, Spain
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature
Switzerland AG 2023
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether
the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or
information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication
does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant
protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or
the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Professor Cipriano Forza
Foreword: The Academic Story of Cipriano
Late afternoon, June 1992, Monte Berico. There are only three people in
the Operations Management Lab at the Institute of Management and
Engineering: Cipriano, another Ph.D. student, and me. Cipriano is
hunched over his keyboard. The data he’s working on for his doctoral
thesis isn’t quite adding up the way he’d like it to. He’s been sitting there
for weeks. His mobile rings and his eyes widen when he sees his wife’s
name appear on the display: “Where are you?” “I’m … on the way
home …” “You said you’d be back early!” Cipriano, abruptly jolted back
into the real world, stands up and motions us—as we try to stifle our
laughs—to be quiet: “I’ll be home in a few minutes.” He sits back down
and continues to tap away at his computer, the phone call already a dis-
tant memory. Sometimes, a person’s passion for research is all-consum-
ing. This comedic episode recurred on several occasions, each of which
has been etched into my memory.
His passion for study and research had taken hold of him definitively
the year before when he had visited Professor Roger Schroeder at the
Carlson School of Management, the University of Minnesota in August
to work on the design of the international survey on WCM (World Class
Manufacturing). The study, initially set to involve only Italy, the United
States, and Japan, was later extended to other several countries to com-
pare various companies’ practices and performance and to seek out the
connections between managerial practices and company performance.
vii
viii Foreword: The Academic Story of Cipriano
with his students, eager to provide them with the stimulation and profes-
sional preparation they need to meet the challenges of work, life, and the
wider world. He also brought an equal and unwavering level of commit-
ment to his post as Director of the Ph.D. School.
In recent years, he has cultivated some significant lines of research for
which he has become an international point of reference, most notably
the phenomenon of “mass customization,” which also appears in
this book.
While I may have offered a contribution to Cipriano’s growth and
education over the years, I have also received a great deal in return from
him, both as a person and as a scientist. For this, I am grateful to him.
Roberto
Emeritus Professor of Management and Filippini
Engineering, Ph.D. supervisor
of Cipriano Forza
Preface
Presentation
This book honors the contributions and remarkable career of Cipriano
Forza, Professor of Management Engineering at the University of Padova,
Italy. He is a Member of the Scientific Committee of Academic Journal
Guide (ABS), an Associate Editor of the Decision Sciences Journal, and a
former Associate Editor of the Journal of Operations Management. As one
of the world’s foremost researchers in the area of mass customization and
operations management, Professor Forza published more than 200 scien-
tific articles with over 10,000 citations on Google Scholar. For his
groundbreaking work, he received several awards, including the Dr. Theo
Williamson Award for Excellence (1997), best paper awards by Production
Planning and Control (2005) and the Journal of Operations Management
(2006), the Harry Boer Highly Commended Award (2016), and the
EurOMA Fellowship Awards (2021).
Besides being a successful researcher and popular university professor,
Cipriano Forza is a wonderful individual, an inspiring mentor, and a fun
person to be around. The individual stories written by his former
Ph.D. students and found at the end of this book will provide the readers
a unique glimpse at the life of a beloved supervisor and friend.
The two editors of this book have completed their doctoral studies
under Cipriano Forza’s supervision and wish to express their gratitude to
xi
xii Preface
their supervisor with this Festschrift. The fact that so many colleagues,
friends, and former Ph.D. students answered the call to contribute to this
edited book is proof of his reputation and degree of esteem in the scien-
tific community.
Book Contents
Leading researchers and practitioners that have been working with the
honoree contributed a broad range of findings from conceptual and
empirical research about mass customization and personalization to this
book. The individual chapters take a customer-centric view on the chal-
lenges and opportunities of product and service customization from an
operations management, information technology, entrepreneurship,
marketing, and organizational perspective. The authors explore key ideas,
current developments, as well as future research directions.
The first chapter, written by Alessio Trentin and Fabrizio Salvador,
conceptually investigates the potential of form postponement for improv-
ing a manufacturer’s sales performance depending on its customers’ inter-
related preferences for customization and responsiveness. The chapter
argues that form postponement can foster customer utility not only and
not necessarily by ensuring the rapid delivery of many pre-specified prod-
uct variants—as typically assumed by prior research—but also by provid-
ing customers more time to articulate their needs or by sparing them the
trouble of forecasting how their needs will change during the product’s
lifespan. A typological theory linking form postponement type, customer
utility, and sales performance is hence proposed, which shows that the
operations’ ability to apply form postponement can play a much more
proactive role than implied by the existing literature in the definition of
a manufacturer’s marketing strategy.
In the second chapter, Aleksandra M. Staskiewicz and her co-authors
Lars Hvam, Anders Haug, and Niels H. Mortensen discuss the role of
stock keeping units management in product variety reduction projects.
Specifically, the authors study why companies may fail to achieve
Preface xiii
This Festschrift would not have been possible without the contribution
of the authors. In addition, several other people have helped to realize
this book and make it a success.
First and foremost, we are grateful to Professor Roberto Filippini, who
supervised Cipriano Forza when he was a doctoral student. His contribu-
tion closes the circle and provides an exclusive view on the career and
development of Cipriano Forza from being a Ph.D. student himself to
becoming a professor and Ph.D. supervisor.
Second, we acknowledge and appreciate the help of those who reviewed
the single chapters or earlier drafts of the book and provided valuable
feedback.
Third, a special thanks goes to the photographer Tamás Thaler, who
allowed us to use the snapshot of the honoree.
Finally, we thank our universities for providing the needed support
with regard to access to databases and other human or financial resources
needed to complete this book.
xv
Contents
Revisiting Form Postponement at the Operations-Marketing
Interface: Form Postponement Types, Customer Utility and
Sales Performance 3
Alessio Trentin and Fabrizio Salvador
The Role of SKU Management in Product Variety Reduction
Projects 37
Aleksandra Magdalena Staskiewicz, Lars Hvam, Anders Haug, and
Niels Henrik Mortensen
The Internationalization of SME Production: Organizational
Challenges and Strategic Opportunities 61
Igor Kalinic
Interorganizational Enablers of Mass Customization:
A Literature Review 85
Enrico Sandrin
xvii
xviii Contents
The Ghost in the Machine: A Multi-method Exploration of the
Role of Individuals in the Simultaneous Pursuit of Flexibility
and Efficiency101
Fabrizio Salvador and Cipriano Forza
Online Shopping Preferences in Mass Customization:
A Comparison Between 2008 and 2021151
Paolo Coletti, Thomas Aichner, and Abdel Monim Shaltoni
Creating Customization Experiences: The Evolution
of Product Configurators179
Paul Blazek
Enhancing Users’ Digital Social Interactions While
Shopping via Online Sales Configurators211
Chiara Grosso
Impact of Racial Diversity in Advertising on the Perception
of Mass-Customized Products by Consumers239
Thomas Aichner, Amanda Brutto, and Michael Nippa
Bibliometrics and Citation Analysis of the Works
of Professor Forza275
Thomas Aichner and Minh Tay Hyunh
Contents xix
Retrospective of the MCP-CE Conference in the Period of
2004–2020313
Zoran Anišić, Nikola Suzić, and Nenad Medić
I ndex347
List of Contributors
xxi
xxii List of Contributors
xxiii
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
And therefore, in a continuous series, there are no immediately
adjacent terms. Dr. Stout’s own illustration brings this out—
β α a b
M
In a diagram like the accompanying b and β are, he argues,
“mediately conjoined,” but a and α are “immediately co-adjacent.”
Surely Dr. Stout forgets here that what can be intelligibly called “co-
adjacent” are not lines but points or positions on the lines. And
between any point in α and any point in a there are a plurality of
intermediate positions, except for the special case of the extreme left
point of a and the extreme right point of α. These, of course,
coalesce in the single point M, and there is therefore no connection,
mediate or immediate, left in this case.[99] The illustration, I think,
may serve to reveal a serious discrepancy in Dr. Stout’s theory. He
sees that relations presuppose a unity which is supra-relational, and
which he calls “continuous,” on the ground of its supra-relational
character. At the same time, to save the relational scheme from
condemnation as leading to the endless regress, he has to turn this
supra-relational unity itself into a sort of relation by calling it an
immediate connection between adjacent terms, and thus ascribing to
it the fundamental character of a discontinuous series. And I cannot
help regarding this procedure as unconscious evidence to the truth
of the principle, that what is not the truth about the whole of Reality is
not ultimately the truth about any reality.
73. See the admirable account of the “natural conception” of the
world in the final chapter of Avenarius, Der Menschliche Weltbegriff.
74. May I say here once for all, that when I oppose practice to
intellectual speculation, I must be understood to mean by practice
the alteration by myself of some datum of given existence. The
activity of thought is thus for me not practical, precisely because the
“truths” which I know or contemplate are not quà truths given
existences operated upon and altered by the act of thinking.
75. Such a view of the mental life of the animal seems to have
been actually held, for instance, by the late Professor T. H. Green.
Yet see Green, Works, ii. 217.
76. Strictly speaking, the “solidity” or “impenetrability” of the
ultimate particles of matter, which is with Locke and Newton one of
the most prominent “primary” qualities, is not a “mathematical”
property, but it still owes its inclusion in the list to the conviction of
these philosophers that it is, like extension and form, fundamentally
important for mathematical Physics. The explanation of the
“secondary” qualities as subjective appears to go back to
Democritus.
77. See the further elaboration of this analogy in Bk. III. chap. 3, §
2 ff.
78. Professor Sidgwick’s defence of the Lockian view (Philosophy:
its Scope and Relations, p. 63 ff.) seems to me to ignore the point at
issue. namely, that in any sense in which “secondary” qualities get
their meaning from the content of sensation, primary qualities do the
same. The whole point is that the sensation is not merely (as
process) the occasion of our cognition of, e.g., hardness or softness,
but also (as content) furnishes the very meaning of “hard” or “soft.”
Cf. with what follows, Appearance and Reality, chap. 1.
79. The former alternative is that of scholasticism; in modern
science the latter has been more or less consciously adopted by
those thinkers who retain the notion of substances. The various
qualities are on this view consequences of the relations in which
each substance stands (a) to other interacting substances, and (b) in
particular to the unknown substratum of our “consciousness.”
80. See chaps. 1 and 2 of bk. i. of his Metaphysic.
81. The reader who desires to study Kant’s doctrine in detail may
begin by taking up Kant’s own Prolegomena to the Study of any
future Metaphysic, which may be profitably consulted even by those
who find the Critique of Pure Reason too diffuse and technical. The
latest and cheapest translation is that included in the Open Court
Publishing Co.’s series of Philosophical Classics.
82. “Arbitrarily” because it is, as all recent psychology insists, the
direction of our attention which determines what qualities shall be
presented together, and thus become “associated.”
83. In Psychology this comes out in the rejection by the best
recent writers of the whole associationist account of the process of
perception, according to which the perception of a thing as a whole
was taken to mean the actual presence in sensation of one of its
qualities plus the reinstatement by association of the “ideas” of the
others. For the modern doctrine of the perception of a whole, as
distinct from the mere perception of its constituent parts, consult
Stout, Analytic Psychology, bk. i. chap. 3, or Manual of Psychology,3
bk. i. chap. 3.
84. This is just as true of the so-called primary qualities of things
as of any others. Thus the mass and again the kinetic energy of a
conservative material system are properly names for the way in
which the system will behave under determinate conditions, not of
modes of behaviour which are necessarily actually exhibited
throughout its existence. The laws of motion, again, are statements
of the same hypothetical kind about the way in which, as we believe,
particles move if certain conditions are fulfilled. The doctrine
according to which all events in the physical world are actual
motions, rests on no more than a metaphysical blunder of a
peculiarly barbarous kind. Cf. Stallo, Concepts and Theories of
Modern Physics, chaps. 10-12.
85. Thus, e.g., so fundamental a proposition in our current
mechanical science as the “first law of motion” is avowedly a
statement as to what would be the behaviour of things under a
condition which, so far as we know, is never actually realised. On the
thing as the “law of its states,” see Lotze, Metaphysic, I. 3. 32 ff.
(Eng. trans., vol. i. p. 88 ff.), and L. T. Hobhouse, The Theory of
Knowledge, pp. 545-557.
86. Mr. Hobhouse (op. cit., p. 541 ff.) thinks that the solution is
simply that those qualities belong to one “substance,” which are
apprehended together as occupying one space. As a working
criterion of what we mean by one bodily thing, this account seems
satisfactory, and has probably suggested itself spontaneously to
most of us. But it leaves untouched the more fundamental question
how the identification of a certain sight-space with a certain touch-
space is effected, and what are the motives which lead to it. Mr.
Hobhouse is content to take the identification as “given in adult
perception,” but it seems to me to emerge from his own good
account of the matter that it is the still more primitive apprehension of
my own body as a felt unity upon which the synthesis between sight
and touch spaces is based. If so, the ultimate source of the “unity of
substance” must be sought deeper than Mr. Hobhouse is willing to
go for it. And quaere, whether his account, if accepted as ultimate,
would not lead to the identification of substance with space? For the
difficulties which arise when you say the substance is the space and
its filling of qualities, see Appearance and Reality, chap. 2, pp. 19,
20 (1st ed.).
87. Monadology, §§ 8-16, 57-62.
88. This is true even where we merely count a number of
qualitatively equivalent units in order to ascertain their sum. It is their
positive character of being qualitatively equivalent which makes it
permissible in this case to take any one of them indifferently as first,
any other as second, etc. Whenever you apply the numerical series
to the arrangement in order of the qualitatively dissimilar, the nature
of your material as related to the character of your special interest in
it decides for you what you shall call first, second, third, etc.
89. As to the possibility of relations which are in this sense
external to their terms, see B. Russell, The Philosophy of Leibniz, p.
130, and the articles by the same writer in Mind for January and July
1901.
90. See the elaborate discussion of the relational scheme implied
in any assertion of difference in Royce, The World and the Individual,
Second Series, lect 2.
91. Bradley, Appearance and Reality, chap. 3. Compare also
chap. 15, “Thought and Reality.”
92. The reader who desires further knowledge of the researches in
the theory of Numbers upon which Prof. Royce’s doctrine is based,
may profitably consult Dedekind, Was sind und was sollen die
Zahlen, and Couturat, L’Infini Mathématique.
93. Professor Royce’s own illustration of the map of England
executed upon a portion of the surface of the country is really a
typical instance of a self-contradictory purpose. He argues that such
a map, to be theoretically perfect, must contain a reduced facsimile
of itself as part of the country mapped, and this again another, and
so on indefinitely. But the whole force of the reasoning depends on
overlooking the distinction between the surface of England as it is
before the map is made, and the surface of England as altered by
the presence of the map. Prof. Royce assumes that you set out to
represent in the map a state of things which can in fact have no
existence until after the map is made. The previous existence of the
map at a certain spot is falsely taken to be one of the conditions to
which the map-maker is to conform in executing it. Every one of the
supposed “maps within the map” will thus involve distortion and
misrepresentation of the district it proposes to map. It is as if Hamlet
had chosen “Hamlet” as the subject of the “play within the play.” The
professor’s illustration thus does less than justice to his theory.
94. The fundamental defect in Professor Royce’s reasoning seems
to me to lie in the tacit transition from the notion of an infinite series
to that of an infinite completed sum. Thus he speaks of the series of
prime numbers as a “whole” being present at once to the mind of
God. But are the prime numbers, or any other infinite series, an
actual sum at all? They are surely not proved to be so by the
existence of general truths about any prime number.
95. See, e.g., Dedekind, op. cit., § 2: “It frequently happens that
different things a, b, c ... are apprehended upon whatsoever
occasion under a common point of view, mentally put together, and it
is then said that they form a system; the things a, b, c ... are named
the elements of the system”; and § 3 (definitions of whole and part).
96. Ante, Bk. II. chap. 2, § 5.
97. It is no answer to this view to urge that as soon as the intellect
undertakes to reflect upon and describe Reality it unavoidably does
so in relational terms. For it is our contention that the same intellect
which uses these relational methods sees why they are inadequate,
and to some extent at least how they are ultimately merged in a
higher type of experience. Thus the systematic use of the intellect in
Metaphysics itself leads to the conviction that the mere intellect is
not the whole of Reality. Or, in still more paradoxical language, the
highest truth for the mere intellect is the thought of Reality as an
ordered system. But all such order is based in the end on the
number-series with its category of whole and part, and cannot,
therefore, be a perfectly adequate representation of a supra-
relational Reality. Hence Truth, from its own nature, can never be
quite the same thing as Reality.
98. Or does Dr. Stout merely mean that there may be a hat and a
head, and also a relation of on and under (e.g., between the hat and
the peg), and yet my hat not be on my head? If this is his meaning, I
reply we have not really got the relation and its terms; if the hat is not
on the head, hat and head are not terms in the relation at all. I do not
see why, on his own principles, Dr. Stout should not add a fourth
factor to his analysis, namely, qualifiedness, or the fact that the
qualities are there, and so on indefinitely.
99. If you consider the lines a and α, as Dr. Stout prefers to do, I
should have thought two views possible. (a) There are not two lines
at all, but one, the “junction” at M being merely ideal. Then there
remains nothing to connect and there is no relation of “immediate
connection.” Or (b), the junction may be taken as real, and then you
have a perfectly ordinary case of relation, the terms being the
terminated lines a and α, and the relation being one of contact at M.
On every ground (a) seems to me the right view, but it is
incompatible with the reduction of continuity to “immediate
connection.” Thus the source of the difficulty is that (1) immediate
connection can only hold between the immediately successive terms
of a discontinuous series, and yet (2) cannot hold between them
precisely because they are discontinuous.
CHAPTER V