Understanding the customer benefits of customisation: Case surfboard

Customisation is one strategy to involve customers in the design process. However, qualitative empirical studies on customisation in different product contexts are scarce. This paper investigates the benefits customers perceive in craft customisation where they are actively involved in the customisation with the designer. The case of this study is a high involvement custom product, a surfboard. Findings derived from qualitative interviews with surfers (N=22) reveal the perceived benefits in the three distinct phases of customisation: pre-customisation, during which the decision to customise is made; customisation process, during which the product is customised; and product usage. The source of the found benefits are the product, process or customisation itself and they can be classified to functional, emotional, experiential, symbolic, aesthetic, personal, social, epistemic, creative, and hedonic. The benefits vary in occurrence during the different customisation phases. Based on the findings, we present a model for the benefits in the three phases of customisation. The model can be used when implementing craft customisation as a design strategy.