Once a year, Christmas is coming!!! It ususally be one of the most important and “annoying” moment for considering which gifts I should buy to who. I wasn’t born in a western family so I don’t like enough cultural knowledge of buying and giving Christmas presents, and i guess there are lots of people who are the same as me. Question: What should I buy?
For suppliers and producers it’s also a serious issue for every year. They have to keep inventing new products amd launching new, attractive marketing plans to the customers in order to sell more. I assume the ideas of designing and developing is not unlimited for companies, so hwo can they keep releaseing new products every year to appreciate the customers continously?
The following two pictures answered my questions. This pictures shows the new concept of M & M’s. you can print everything you want on the M & M’s chocolate beans, your lover’s face, a symbol, anything that is meaningful to the gift receiver, or just simply “I love you.”
you might say, “this kind of customization has already existed for a long time! Apple does this, Sony does this!” yes you are right. When you order the some Apple products, you can upload your sentence then the company is going to print the sentence on the electric product you ordered. What is the difference between what Apple and M & M’s are currently doing for the mass customization for the products?
First, the price of products themselves are different. Imagine you want to buy an iPad to your best friend, and it costs $549 before tax; for the majority of students who have low income, this kind of action only exists in their imagination. (I always imagine someone can give me an iPad in the Christmas!) For giving chocolate beans it would be far more affordable to be a Christmas present. If everybody is buying the same, the gift would be less unique, wouldn’t it? It is how mass customization works to provide specialness.
Second, the chance of products’ perceived value to the customers is different. For the iPad or the latest Macbook Air, even thoug h their size is small, the customization part would only takes a very small part or the overall product and the perceived value. It means no matter you add the sentance on the iPad or not, it won’t change the perception of the product a lot. However, the facial expression, funny symbols or sentance almost chance the overall appearance of each M & M’s!! You are designing your own M & M’s and it only belongs to you and your best friends or lovers. Under the fact that M & M’s isn’t related to a word “expensive” at all, your unique design of the M & M’s doubles, triples or even ten times the perceived value of the chocolate beans.
For the department of product design of M & M’s, it’s also a good news. Instead of lockign all the designing team in the conference room, doing brainstorming again and again, now they only need to accept their customers’ design and do exactly the same as they want. (Even though they might get laid off eventually because they become less important to the company….)
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