Social product configuration: reflecting on the gap between users' motivational drivers and avaiable online sales configurator-socisal software connection.

E-commerce is taking a more social, creative, and collaborative approach with customers in online marketplaces that engender social commerce (SC), an online commercial application that implements social technology features to enhance customer involvement at different levels of the online shopping experience. SC is new but fast growing—it is spreading to the majority of e-commerce activities. Companies that sell customizable products through online-sales configurators (OSCs) can start implementing SC using mass-customization systems that incorporate social features through social product customization systems. Complementing an OSC with social software (SSW) renders the configurator a highly interactive medium that is able to support a user’s digital interactions. Although recent studies have addressed OSC-SSW connections, prior research on social customization systems has not explored to what extent social-interaction features that are currently incorporated into OSCs respond to users’ actual need to engage in human-assisted interactions with their contacts during their configuration experiences. The present paper helps address this gap by adopting a theory-driven approach to compare the findings from the literature on this topic. A multistage analysis was adopted to empirically respond to the research question that the present study addresses—how to implement a product-configuration environment with social interactive features for users and their contacts. Following the analysis, we describe the design of a new connection between OSCs and SSW with the ability to meet user demand for digital social interaction (DSI) with contacts. This paper aims to provide insights to enhance the personalization of customers’ experience via OSCs by allowing users human-assisted interactions with their contacts.