Trend: custom-made from the production line

Mass customization and personalization are regarded as global megatrends. But how should we grasp what these trends are actually about? Do they only apply to promotional products? And what’s all this got to do with online print?

It still causes a certain amount of confusion when the term mass customization is mentioned. Not only because the term is difficult to pronounce, but also because a basic understanding of what it means is lacking. But you can definitely understand why, because mass customization is strictly speaking a paradox. “It is made-to-order manufacturing to a mass-production degree of efficiency”, is how Prof. Dr. Frank Piller, one of the most renowned mass customization experts, describes it.

To understand it properly, you have to go back in time quite a way. It all started with the Industrial Revolution and the assembly line, which enabled mass production and made products universally affordable. That is the case to this day, but has also resulted in increasingly cheaper products and that absurd “tight is right” mentality. Manufacturers of mass-produced goods wish to serve a market that’s as broad as possible, but the “one size fits all” strategy no longer meets many customers’ needs. At some point the market “went off-course”, because consumers were no longer interested in just the bare necessities. Nowadays they want the thrill of variety, they don’t want to go with the flow, but do exactly what others aren’t doing – simply being individual.

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