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The Evolutionary Process of Product Configurators

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Managing Complexity

Part of the book series: Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics ((SPBE))

Abstract

The field of mass customization is constantly in an evolutionary process, which becomes obvious when observing product configurator offerings over a period of time. The evaluation of the biggest collection of product configurators, the Configurator Database (www.configurator-database.com), reveals which industries and product categories show the highest growth and where the offer is likely to decline. Besides having a look on statistical developments, the objective of this paper is to identify functional and visual changes of these crucial tools for mass customization. Based on case examples in the automotive industry, the user interfaces of configurators are researched with a special focus on visual elements and interaction possibilities.

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References

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. cyLEDGE Media GmbH, Vienna, Austria

    Paul Blažek, Monika Kolb, Clarissa Streichsbier & Simone Honetz

Authors
  1. Paul Blažek
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  2. Monika Kolb
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  3. Clarissa Streichsbier
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  4. Simone Honetz
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Paul Blažek .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Management & Technology, University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Jocelyn Bellemare

  2. Department of Management & Technology, University of Quebec at Montreal, Montreal, QC, Canada

    Serge Carrier

  3. Department of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Aalborg University, Aalborg, Denmark

    Kjeld Nielsen

  4. Technology and Innovation Management, RWTH Aachen University, Aachen, Germany

    Frank T. Piller

Appendix

Appendix

Table 13.1 URLs of the 33 analyzed automobile configurators
Full size table

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Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

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Blažek, P., Kolb, M., Streichsbier, C., Honetz, S. (2017). The Evolutionary Process of Product Configurators. In: Bellemare, J., Carrier, S., Nielsen, K., Piller, F.T. (eds) Managing Complexity. Springer Proceedings in Business and Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-29058-4_13

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