User-Interface Design for Individualization Services to Enhance Sustainable Consumption and Production

Mass Customization (MC) inherently offers the service of individualization of goods and services to customers aiming at better meeting customers’ personal needs. The potential to increase the sustainable performance of businesses by applying MC has been examined in various consumer goods related EU projects so far. Especially, when offering MC as a sustainable Product Service System it is capable of improving the management of the whole product lifecycle. Evidence of this approach has already been presented for some sectors, such as in food and apparel. In other sectors, the interaction between MC and sustainability has not been significantly explored yet. In this paper, we both, theoretically and empirically assess the integration of sustainability in the individualization service offered through user-interfaces, such as in particular configurators. We provide insights from reviewing more than 900 web-based configurators within 16 different industries. Our analysis reveals that only about five percent of all user-interfaces address sustainability issues in their individualization services. By linking our results with the insights gained in our literature review, we make recommendations for the integration of sustainability in the user-interface design. Furthermore, we identify opportunities for future research.