The Effect of Mass Customization on Competitive Strategy (The Case of Addis Ababa Tannery S.C & Tikur Abbay Shoe S.C)
No Thumbnail Available
Date
2013-11
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Now day‟s customers are demanding more and more from time to time. There is a frequent change of customers‟ needs and wants. This in turn is bringing different challenges in the manufacturing system of firms. As a result of these and other factors mass customization as a production strategy has drawn great attention from scholars in various fields in the recent years. The objective of this study was to investigate the effect of mass customization on competitive strategy in order to break the challenging paradox between the two strategies. In this study, mass customization was operationalised into four major approaches. These are: collaborative mass customization, adaptive mass customization, transparent mass customization & cosmetic mass customization. On the other hand, competitive strategy was defined as cost leadership strategy and differentiation strategy. Cost leadership was defined as low cost production of standardized products and differentiation was defined as producing products differently from competitors and trying to satisfy unique need of customers. Mixed research approach is used in this study. It is cross-sectional study. The researcher used self-constructed ordered response questionnaire and evaluated mass customization & competitive strategy of Addis Ababa Tannery S.C and Tikur Abbay Shoe S.C, with the help of 127 professional workers of the companies who are working in different departments and thereby measured the effect of the mass customization on the companys‟ competitive strategy. The researcher has analyzed the data with help of descriptive statistics and ordinal logistic regression model for ordered response questionnaire. The result shows negative effect of mass customization on competitive strategy except for transparent mass customization which positively affected both cost leadership and differentiation strategies. The positive effect is stronger between transparent mass customization and cost leadership strategy than between transparent mass customization and differentiation strategy. Lastly, some conclusions and recommendations are forwarded regarding the result of the investigation.
Keywords: Mass customization, Cost leadership, Differentiation & Ordinal logistic regression model
Description
Keywords
Mass customization, Cost leadership, Differentiation, & Ordinal logistic regression model