Personalization and Mass-Customization in the Research Literature

Abstract. Personalization and mass-customization are defined in numerous ways in the research literature. We combine a text-mining approach for profiling personalization and mass-customization research with a literature review in order to distinguish the characteristics of these two research streams. Research profiling with search words personalization and mass-customization was conduted using the ISI Web of Science database in April 2009. The elements typical to the personalization and masscustomization research were identified. Personalization research has a strong focus on technology and the internet, in addition to which it emphasizes customers’ needs and preferences and information collection for user modeling and recommender systems.
Mass-customization is an older research stream, and the main body of the research has focused on tangible products but has lately initiated service research as well. We suggest a classification of concepts linked to personalization in order to avoid confusion with the use of these concepts.

Keywords. Personalization, Mass-customization, Customization, Research Profiling, Literature Review.