Within user manufacturing, a customer is both the manufacturer and the consumer. As an example, an online platform provides the customer with the necessary support in order to design and merchandise the product, e.g., product design software, manufacturing services, or an online shop to sell the product. Thus, the company only supports the customers in their undertakings and benefits from their creativity. The customer benefits from the potential to realize entrepreneurial ideas without having to provide the required infrastructure. Revenue is then generated as part of the actual sales.
How they do it: Wikipedia, a free encyclopedia based on a model of openly editable content is one of the most popular websites. All its content is created by its users. Time magazine stated that the open-door policy of allowing anyone to edit had made Wikipedia the biggest and possibly the best encyclopedia in the world and it was testament to the vision of Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s Founder.
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How they do it: Frequently, McDonald’s organizes contests where customers are able to design their own burger. This is done via an online tool on the McDonald’s website. In a next step all visitors can vote for their favorite creation, and the most popular creation actually gets produced and sold in the restaurants. This enables them to connect with their customers and test burgers for their restaurants.
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How they do it: Using the Lego Digital Designer (LDD) people could design their own 3-D virtual model, and submit it for purchase using the shop-at-home division. Factory was also designed to enable users to view and purchase other users custom creations, you could add or remove bricks from creations at will, and then purchase for yourself. Factory sets arrived in custom packaging that showed a users model and name, and included all of the LEGO elements needed to build the virtual design in physical form.
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How they do it: Cewe’s value proposition is that the user can individualize its products as wanted. ´Cewe just provides the infrastructure, tools and blank materials to do so.
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How they do it: Next to its standard collections Nike started a program called ”Nike ID”. This allows customers to individualize their products such as shoes and shirts. Individualization can include choice of colors or sticking a personal message.
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Below, the top industries for the pattern "User Designed" are displayed, in order to get insights into how this pattern is applied across different industries. We've collected data from 5 firms using this pattern.
Below, the pattern "User Designed" is analyzed based on co-occurrence, in order to get insights into how this business model pattern is applied in combination with other patterns within the firms we studied.
