Title: Entrepreneurs and branding in an environment of mass customisation and open innovation

Authors: Khaled Hamid

Addresses: Department of Fashion Design and Merchandising, School of Arts, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia, USA

Abstract: Recently, Mass Customisation and open innovation have emerged as new and attractive business concepts. They reinforced a trend of business models (and cultures) being shaped by new technologies while redefining the relationship between businesses and consumers in the process. Both concepts suggest a new paradigm that has a strong impact on the traditional product development cycle. But the implications go beyond that, as they reposition consumers in the development process of brands. The result is an equally strong impact on marketing principles that is worth further exploration. As a result, this new framework of |open sourced branding|, offers entrepreneurs and small business owners, as well as brand managers and marketers, a lot of new opportunities and challenges as they strive to compete. This paper aims at looking into the |brand| concept under mass customisation and explores some of these new challenges and opportunities.

Keywords: technology; entrepreneurs; brands; marketing; mass customisation; open innovation; entrepreneurship; product development; open sourced branding; brand management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJESB.2009.023362

International Journal of Entrepreneurship and Small Business, 2009 Vol.7 No.4, pp.457 - 465

Published online: 20 Feb 2009 *

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