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these low numbers are not surprising. Only a handful of mass-market brands havemoved to mass customization beyond pilot testing and niche markets. Mass customizationis still very much a niche business (Piller and Ihl, 2002; Zipkin, 2001), dominated by highlyspecialized businesses that are small and often young. Based on my personal understandingand experience gained from teaching, researching and consulting on this concept, I putforward twelve propositions about the recent state of mass customization practice in this
paper. These propositions could become starting points for a scholarly and managerialdiscussion in future. Given my background in business administration, I will focus onmanagement and Marketing issues (for challenges resulting from supply chain management,engineering, and product design, see, e.g., Boer and Dulio, 2003; Brown and Bessant, 2003;MacCarthy, Bramham, and Brabazon, 2003; Salvador, Rungtusanatham, and Forza, 2004;Squire, Readman, Brown, and Bessant, 2004; Tseng and Jiao, 2001; Tseng, 2002). I willfurther focus my discussion on companies serving typical “mass” markets, conventionallycharacterized by made-to-stock and inventory based distribution systems.
2. The term– mass customization

Note
1. The outcome of this research, building also the preunderstanding of this paper, is summarized in Piller (2003a,
2005). Its empirical foundation is based on a proprietary database of our research group documenting roughly
220 companies following customer centric strategies (with a focus on mass customization). The objective of
this database is to document and evaluate different aspects of mass customization and customer-centric value
creation. It has been created since 1995. Information on the cases is gathered from primary sources such as semistructured
interviews with the firm’s management and company visits and complemented through secondary
sources such as database research and expert interviews from outsiders. In addition to this database, our group
coordinates an industry board of approximately twenty mass customization companies, which provides an
in-depth insight into the evolution of mass customization strategies in these companies.
330 PILLER
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