An interactive online-software that enables customers to choose, for a variety of features, a single option from a list of options. Used during online purchase, a customer can take a basic product and then customize it by selecting from a set of product features.
Published in Chapter:
Configurators/Choiceboards: Uses, Benefits, and Analysis of Data
Paul D. Berger (Bentley University, USA), Richard C. Hanna (Northeastern University, USA), Scott D. Swain (Northeastern University, USA), and Bruce D. Weinberg (Bentley University, USA)
Copyright: © 2010
|Pages: 8
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-61520-611-7.ch042
Abstract
This article discusses the uses and benefits of configurator/choiceboard systems, and how analysis of data from its use can be useful to the company having such a system. Dell and other companies have greatly improved, if not perfected, the art of product customization by using a system of choiceboards or configurators (used here as interchangeable terms) that allow consumers to customize their products. A popular term for what is being accomplished by the use of choiceboards is “mass customization,” a term that not long ago may have been thought of as an oxymoron. We always had “job shops” that produced to order for individual consumers or companies. However, relatively speaking, individual customization did not occur on a large-scale basis, and was quite distinct from what was called mass production, and surely, was not routinely available online even when there was first an “online.”