Cross-National Differences in Uncertainty Avoidance Predict the Effectiveness of Mass Customization across East Asia: A Large-Scale Field Investigation

Why does mass customization succeed in some East Asian markets but fail in others? Building on and extending prior work on uncertainty avoidance, this research suggests that providing mass customization in highly uncertainty-avoiding cultures can have negative consequences for consumers and companies, including longer configuration duration, lower conversion rates to actually purchase the customized product, and a reduced degree of sharing one’s product with other consumers. We provide support for those propositions based on two large-scale field studies involving more than 700,000 prospective car buyers in Japan and Taiwan (scoring high on uncertainty avoidance) versus China and Singapore (scoring low on uncertainty avoidance). Our findings on actual customers suggest that neglecting cross-national differences in uncertainty avoidance across East Asia puts both consumers and companies at risk due to more onerous customization experiences for consumers and substantially lower conversion for companies.