Barriers and enablers to food mass customization

Luiz Philipi Calegari, Marianne Costa Avalone and Diego Castro Fettermann

Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies, 2020, vol. 10, issue 4, 403-428

Abstract: Purpose - This study is to propose a procedure to support decisions on which enablers should be employed to minimize the impact of barriers to implementing mass customization strategies in food companies. Design/methodology/approach - Through interpretive structural modeling, the authors analyzed the relationships between barriers. Then, with an approach similar to the quality function deployment technique, commonly used in general product and process development, the authors clarified the relationships between barriers and enablers. Findings - The results revealed 19 barriers and 17 enablers for implementing food mass customization. The analysis indicates that most of the barriers (16) present strong associations with each other. The barrier “products with non-customizable features” depends on the whole chain of associations and causes a minor impact on the other barriers. In turn, the barrier “ingredient incompatibility” causes impact over the whole chain, and its dependence on other barriers is very low. Research limitations/implications - The results were tested in a single Brazilian company in the food sector. Practical implications - The findings can allow food manufacturing companies to focus their efforts on the improvement of enabling technologies, such as smart packaging, Internet of Things and additive manufacture. Social implications - This study would help food companies to improve their business and provide better products to society. Originality/value - There are few recommendations in the literature to how to implement mass customization strategy in companies from the food sector. This study fills in this gap presenting a procedure to guide managerial staff to develop this promising approach for food companies.

Keywords: Food packaging; Food additives; Food technology; Food personalization; Brazil; IoT technologies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eme:jadeep:jadee-08-2019-0116

DOI: 10.1108/JADEE-08-2019-0116

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies is currently edited by Anthony N. Rezitis

More articles in Journal of Agribusiness in Developing and Emerging Economies from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().