"This book focuses on the customization of services and communication environments to advance user satisfaction--Provided by publisher.

This proceedings volume presents the latest research from the worldwide mass customization & personalization (MCP) community bringing together new thoughts and results from various disciplines within the field. The chapters are based on papers from the MCPC 2017. The book showcases research and practice from authors that see MCP as an opportunity to extend or even revolutionize current business models. The current trends of Industrie 4.0, digital manufacturing, and the rise of smart products allow for a fresh perspective on MCP: Customization 4.0. The book places a new set of values in the centre of the debate: a world with finite resources, global population growth, and exacerbating climate change needs smart thinking to engage the most effective capabilities and resources. It discusses how Customization 4.0 fosters sustainable development and creates shared value for companies, customers, consumers, and the society as a whole. The chapters of this book are contributed by a wide range of specialists, offering cutting-edge research, as well as insightful advances in industrial practice in key areas. The MCPC 2017 has a strong focus on real life MCP applications, and this proceedings volume reflects this. MCP strategies aim to profit from the fact that people are different. Their objective is to turn customer heterogeneities into opportunities, hence addressing “long tail” business models. The objective of MCP is to provide goods and services that best serve individual customers’ needs with near mass production efficiency. This proceedings volume highlights the interdisciplinary work of thought leaders, technology developers, and researchers with corporate entrepreneurs putting these strategies into practice. Chapter 24 is open access under a CC BY 4.0 license via link.springer.com.

The international cast of authors in this important book explore how internationalizing small and medium sized enterprises (iSMEs) face major crises, such as COVID-19, and have managed them to reach a stable and desired state post-crisis. Chapter orientations vary from theoretical to empirical. Each focuses on issues related to a major crisis, and present already-deployed success strategies in 14 different country environments. The rich diversity of chapters offers a highly significant and timely contribution to the field.

In this book, the authors describe the findings derived from interaction and cooperation between scientific actors employing diverse practices. They reflect on distinct prototyping concepts and examine the transformation of development culture in their fusion to hybrid approaches and solutions. The products of tomorrow are going to be multifunctional, interactive systems – and already are to some degree today. Collaboration across multiple disciplines is the only way to grasp their complexity in design concepts. This underscores the importance of reconsidering the prototyping process for the development of these systems, particularly in transdisciplinary research teams. “Rethinking Prototyping – new hybrid concepts for prototyping” was a transdisciplinary project that took up this challenge. The aim of this programmatic rethinking was to come up with a general concept of prototyping by combining innovative prototyping concepts, which had been researched and developed in three sub-projects: “Hybrid Prototyping” developed new prototyping approaches to validate and evaluate holistically developed systems with their services, infrastructure and business models. “Blended Prototyping” addressed a new technique whereby prototypes for user interfaces of software applications can be generated from hand drawings and immediately be tested. “Beyond Prototyping” examined the issue of the prototype in connection with algorithmically generated design for producing tailor-made products.

The workforce is considered to be the lifeblood within many major corporations. The ability of management to effectively utilize the knowledge and skills of their workforce is essential in ensuring the success of their corporations. Harnessing Human Capital Analytics for Competitive Advantage is a critical scholarly publication that explores the influence that workforce knowledge and skills can have on the performance of corporations and how such skills can be used to promote the success of corporations. Featuring coverage on a wide range of topics including employee happiness, mind genomics, and e-commerce adoption, this book is geared toward managers, professionals, and practitioners seeking current research on the advantage of utilizing workforce knowledge and skills to promote corporate success.

As humans interact more often and more intimately with computers, and as computational systems become an ever more important element of our society, playing roles in education, the production of culture and goods, and management, it is inevitable that we should seek to interact with these systems in ways that take advantage of our powerful emotional capabilities. Creating Synthetic Emotions through Technological and Robotic Advancements compiles progressive research in the emerging and groundbreaking fields of artificial emotions, affective computing, and sociable robotics that allow humans to begin the once impossible-seeming task of interacting with robots, systems, devices, and agents. This landmark volume brings together expert international researchers to expound upon these topics as synthetic emotions move toward becoming a daily reality.

Technological developments have created new opportunities for contemporary businesses. Online stores can now utilize a specific branch of marketing in order to maximize the revenue of their business and increase website traffic. Driving Traffic and Customer Activity Through Affiliate Marketing is an essential reference publication highlighting the latest scholarly research on the method of increasing online business traffic and sales by external referrals. Featuring extensive coverage on a broad range of topics and perspectives such as networking, program management, and customer satisfaction, this book is ideally designed for academicians, practitioners, and students seeking current information on ways to increase customer activity.