Abstract: Customer self-production is becoming common in recent years. Although marketing scholars have examined the impacts of customer self-design, customer self-assembly, and customer self-design & assemble on outcomes such as customer product evaluation and customer willing to pay correspondingly, the comparative study of these three modes is still lack, which makes it no theoretical base for firms to make production mode decision. Based on the theory of endowment effect and taking the product value increasing as the outcome, this article makes a comparative study about the three modes of customer self-production. The results show that all of these three modes have product value increasing effect, but are not equal. The product value increasing effects of customer self-design and customer self-design & self-assembly are not significantly unequal, but significantly larger than that of customer self-assembly; customer-product integration is the reason why the product value increasing effects of these three modes are unequal; brand strength has different impacts on the product value increasing effect of these three mode. This article not only can enrich the extant research of customer self-production, but also can provide theoretical bases for firm′s production mode decision.

Key words: customer self-production mode, product value increasing, customer-product integration, brand strength