Project Customization and the Supplier Revenue–Cost Dilemmas: The Critical Roles of Supplier–Customer Coordination
研究供应商在为客户定制项目时面临的收入与成本矛盾，发现客户需求模糊性、客户参与、产品模块化等因素能缓解这一矛盾，对B2B营销策略有指导意义。
This study examines customization as a coordination problem in transactions with business customers. Marketing research has investigated challenges associated with customized offers from the customer side; however, scant research has examined the supplier's challenges and their performance implications. The authors distinguish between project revenues and costs to reveal a fundamental dilemma that suppliers face during customization. Analyses of dyadic survey data collected from a software supplier and its business customers, as well as objective revenue and cost data, reveal a tension between project revenues and costs. The outcomes of customization depend on factors that relieve the coordination problem, such as customer demand ambiguity, customer participation, product modularity, project team technological capability, and relational embeddedness. These findings provide a basis to assess the value of customization as a tool to implement a customer-oriented business-to-business marketing strategy.