Differences And Disadvantages Of Standardization Vs. Customization

While faced with competitive markets and globalization, companies are always looking for ways to improve their overall cost and pricing structure. It is becoming increasingly more difficult to maintain quality levels of service while providing good and services at rates where companies can remain profitable.

Standardization: Set of predefined specifications, rules or features that manufactures or producers need to follow when they make/produce the products/goods or components of it. Example- MacDonalds set standardization for each of its menu items like size, weight, food value etc. So, each food item need to prepare according to predefined standard.

I agree completely, the lack of standardization among laws created at local, state, and federal levels, and particularly from state to state does present a huge problem when faced with the task of reporting crime statistics. Unfortunately, a federal description of laws, or enforcement of standardization set by the supreme court would undermine the democratic system in as a whole. The entire reason that laws and the description of offenses vary from state to state, is that these laws and standards are set by three different levels of government, which provides an inherent method of checks and balances. Local laws can be challenged on the state level, and if still found constitutional,

The self-service system brings benefits to both IKEA and consumers, and it’s concept in the market offer many reciprocal benefits to achieve common progress. For IKEA, the innovative service has contributed to the expanding of the corporation and the growth of sales which in turn increase its economic influence and gives it a very competitive advantage. The self-service benefit also helps the standardization of the service system and enables IKEA to achieve the economic scale while reducing cost. As Nurmandi (2012) said, the standardization of the service management system plays a crucial role in searching economy of scale and reducing costs. The self-service helps reduce the costs of hiring salesman and give more advantages to decrease the goods price because the fixed costs have been cut down. Customers for example, can get cheap products at IKEA while participating as in the role of co-producer not only a client anymore; thus inspire them to have more willingness to buy more products(Inter IKEA Systems B.V., 2015).

Tangible goods, or rather manufactured goods, have been the dominant medium of exchange for centuries. However, recent decades have proved that it is no longer the case as there has been a prevalence of being service oriented (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:1-2). Services, as defined by Vargo and Lusch (2004), are  “the application of specialized competences (knowledge and skills) through deeds, processes, and performances for the benefit of another entity or the entity itself (p.2).” Utilizing services gives businesses an edge, a competitive advantage, particularly in an evolving competitive market, something which Metalfrio is definitely part of (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:9).  Those businesses that learn to adapt tend to do well. In addition, Vargo and Lusch (2004) write this shift to services is also a shift from producer perspective to a customer perspective (p.2). Thus, it leads to more of a collaborative effort where co-creation leads to adding value to the service rather than a product having value (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:6). Also, customers rather develop relationships with those that can provide a range of related services over an extended period of time, thus allowing businesses retain their clients for the long term (Vargo and Lusch, 2004:13). Overall, service oriented marketing is a direction that businesses should be headed towards to ensure that they can remain relevant and competitive in the

To compete now a day’s competitive environment companies have to take a look on customer satisfaction as a high priority because they now a days demands improved products in quality, cost and reliability. And these are the key factors on which the organization must focus on and to consider those key factors, organizations must adopt new approaches of management to gain the satisfaction of customer. We can examine every item in the figure shown below.

We live in a culture where we want everything fast and easy, and in recent years we have seen the fast and casual restaurant business increase. This fast and casual increase has not just been in the pizza market, but in Mexican, Chinese, burgers, etc. Fast-casual has become the new buzz word. Independent pizza chains have fared worse than the larger pizza chains with sales declining by 5%, but the larger pizza chains showing growth of almost 3.8%. A case study on competitive service quality improvement (CSQI) in the fast food industry was conducted and the results revealed aspects of service, rather than product, were key in differentiation in the saturated market This is not surprising since it becoming more and more difficult to differentiate product. The competitive advantage opportunity lies within the ability to personal and accommodate the customer's experience (Seok-hoon, Yong-pil, 2004). Changes in the next decade will center around increased technology for improving the customer experience along with providing fast and easy service. Pizza chains will focus on quick service while maintaining quality that includes fresh ingredients, and ramping up the delivery

Customer satisfaction and service quality are the two important components that direct anyone’s attention in every concept related to marketing, services, etc. (Spreng and Mackoy, 2006). In today’s competitive era, the success lies in

The qualities of product and services are one of the primary objects for any organization for its success. Having clearly set goals is a prerequisite need for operation in aim to satisfy profoundly the demands of the consumers. According to Goetsch and Davis (2014), irrespective of the business activities for instance software, financial services, food retailing, books and clothing, and petrol fuel, the underlying perception of the consumer is quality of the products and

The definition of the concept of standardization in business is hugely dependent on the nature of business activity under consideration (Roach 2007). Although the concept is easily defined in the marketing context, since it is defined in terms of the 4Ps (product, price, place and promotion), the concept is more complex when used in the context of the product choices. A multinational corporation would be forced to make a decision on whether to adopt complete standardization, which involves creation of completely new product for each geographical market or complete

Aldous Huxley noticed problems in his society. Today, people face some of those problems: standardization, the need for a “perfect” society, and how people rank others on class. These are problems that are all still around today.

Since the 1980s businesses has bear witness to the dramatic changes within the manufacturing and service environment, due to the deregulation of pre-privatised governmental industries. In retrospect, this caused companies to reassess their strategies to reflect the evolving competitive environment. Immediately, companies were faced with the task of producing the same quality goods at a competitive global price. Globalisation, meant that customers had the ability to shop around for competitive prices, meaning that companies had to base their whole business around customer satisfaction. In order for business to survive they needed to adapt, meaning they had to find new techniques to keep cost low, whilst at the same time remaining

A good customer service is an outstanding dynamic performance, which takes care of customer by all means. It provides a professional assistance followed by a high level of skills and communication. New Zealand’s customer service is growing rapidly in providing a better service for its customer.This service sector is a motivating force towards NZ economic growth, which indicates the links to all business sectors and involves all New Zealanders in every aspect of trade. New Zealand Productivity Commission 2014 (NZPC) reports, the effectiveness of customer service and business in general has made a major positive change in NZ. The recent economic growth in NZ is twice as high in comparison to the last four decades. The statistic shows NZ service sector likely to be nearly at the same level as Australia while the United States is slightly over 3 times higher than NZ. Therefore, it is highly important to maintain three factors in Customer service and create a connecting chain with other business sectors in order to raise the economy of NZ even higher. For example, the main feature of CS to accommodate its customer and to have a long term relationship by treating customer with care and appreciate their support. A professional customer service will concern and provide a good quality of service, the right timing and value for their products. Hence, to insure and secure its function by offering a wonderful service. In addition, to increase the use of the service as demanded by its

To offer good customer service consistently is not an easy task as retail employees are hard to train and less consistent than machines. However, good customer service still can be developed with considerable amount of time and effort that retailers put in. Once a retailer has earned a good service reputation, it can sustain this advantage for a longer time as it is hard for competitor to develop a comparable reputation. A retailer may achieve a sustainable competitive advantage through their merchandise offerings by having exclusively merchandise and use its distribution system to respond quickly to meet the target market segment. One good example is how retailers positioning themselves to complement their private label merchandise with national brands that appeal to their target market in order to gain long-term competitive advantage. In order to develop loyal customers, retailers must offer a consistent retail mix. For example, a department store is projecting its image of providing excellence service with most up to-date fashionable merchandise. The customers will expect to find the excellent service with latest in fashions from this store. The customers might shift to another store if they find the store did not provide the consistently most fashionable merchandise with well-trained service-oriented salespersons to assist

Mass service customization creates opportunities for firms to provide products and services to serve unique customer needs while maintaining the efficiency of near mass production (Jiao, Ma, & Tseng, 2003). With mass production, economies of scale are generated with the continuous production of similar, standardized products; however, a consequence of mass production is the limitation of customer choice. No longer are customers satisfied with mass production, customers want tailored products individualized to their demands. Mass customization is an opportunity to accentuate the differences or uniqueness of services to appeal to specific customers. Therefore, firms companies that create mass individualized services are more able to give each customer what they want, when they want it.