Antecedents of mass customization capability: Direct and interaction effects

Research suggests that flexible manufacturing resources, customer involvement, and product management tools contribute to a high level of mass customization capability. Conceptualizing these antecedents as resource types, we examine hypotheses about their direct and complementary effects on mass customization capability. Analyzing secondary survey data from 238 plants in eight countries and three industries via hierarchical linear regression, we find that each individual resource type has a positive direct effect on mass customization capability, as long as the levels of the other two resources are at their sample mean value. Probing these results via conditional effects and marginal effects plots provides partial support for the complementarity argument, and unveil complex nonlinear interactions among the three resource types. When the level of one resource type is low, the two remaining resource types exhibit a strong bivariate complementary effect on mass customization capability. Conversely, when one resource type is at a high level, the complementary effect on mass customization capability of the two remaining resource types disappears and is replaced by a cancellation effect. The detection of complementary effects and of cancellation effects are two specific theoretical contributions to the literature on how manufacturers can enhance their capability to mass customize.