When Social Media Can Be Bad for You: Community Feedback Stifles Consumer Creativity and Reduces Satisfaction with Self-Designed Products

Enabling consumers to self-design unique products that match their idiosyncratic preferences is the key value driver of modern mass customization systems. These systems are increasingly becoming "social," allowing for consumer-to-consumer interactions such as commenting on each other'...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inInformation systems research Vol. 24; no. 1; pp. 14 - 29
Main Authors Hildebrand, Christian, Häubl, Gerald, Herrmann, Andreas, Landwehr, Jan R.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Linthicum INFORMS 01.03.2013
The Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS)
Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Subjects
Automobile industry
Communities
Community
Conformity
Consumer behavior
consumer decision making
Consumer research
Consumers
Customer feedback
Customer satisfaction
Customization
Design
Earrings
experiment
Feedback
Field study
Hypotheses
Influence
Information storage and retrieval systems
Marketing
Mass customization
mass customization systems
Preferences
product configurators
Product design
Product development
Social aspects
Social influence
Social interaction
Social media
Social networks
Studies
Sumer
user self-design
Europe
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Summary:Enabling consumers to self-design unique products that match their idiosyncratic preferences is the key value driver of modern mass customization systems. These systems are increasingly becoming "social," allowing for consumer-to-consumer interactions such as commenting on each other's self-designed products. The present research examines how receiving others' feedback on initial product configurations affects consumers' ultimate product designs and their satisfaction with these self-designed products. Evidence from a field study in a European car manufacturer's brand community and from two follow-up experiments reveals that receiving feedback from other community members on initial self-designs leads to less unique final self-designs, lower satisfaction with self-designed products, lower product usage frequency, and lower monetary product valuations. We provide evidence that the negative influence of feedback on consumers' satisfaction with self-designed products is mediated by an increase in decision uncertainty and perceived process complexity. The implications of socially enriched mass customization systems for both consumer welfare and seller profitability are discussed.
ISSN:1047-7047
1526-5536
DOI:10.1287/isre.1120.0455