Customers’ Learning Process During Product Customization: the Case of Online Configuration Tool Kits

Online configuration tool kits present attractive opportunities for creating customized offers. The purpose of this study is to analyze the relevance of both the TAM (Technology Acceptance Model) and the experiential learning theory to understand how configuration contributes to provide value for end users. The qualitative survey shows that the TAM needs to be adapted to the case of configurators by measuring both perceived usefulness (PU) of the configured product and PU and ease of use of the configurator itself. The study shows the relevance of experiential learning theory as an antecedent of the TAM. A model summarizing our observations is proposed and discussed.