Information technology as an enabler for mass customization strategy: Integrating customer and organization

Mass customization is a strategy adopted by organizations in order to offer customized goods and services to customers. The understanding of customers´ preferences and their demands for personalization about one product or service and then translate it to the product design & research team is a key point to make mass customization strategy work. In this context, information technology (IT) can represent a great enabler for mass customization strategy, once it offers a way to create integration between the customer and the organization. This paper presents the findings of a case study that investigated how a company implemented a customer interaction system for its products, analyzing which were the internal impacts of this system, which changes were made in its internal process, in which way the IT enhanced the capacity to offer customized products an how business strategy and IT strategy are aligned.