ABSTRACT
This chapter defines mass customization as “variety and customization through flexibility and quick responsiveness.” The American Marketing Association (AMA) defines marketing as “the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.” Marketing, as it is commonly carried out in most enterprises, is push, push, push. It takes an offering that is generally already hanging on a rack, lying in a lot, or sitting on a shelf somewhere and seeks to push what it already made onto a customer, often without caring whether the offering really meets the needs of whoever buys it. Perhaps the most pernicious practice of marketing is targeting customers that the company thinks – based on what little it knows – might be in the market for one of its offerings, and then bombarding them with messages to buy, buy, buy that offering.
