Sales configurator capabilities to prevent product variety from backfiring

Firms offering high product variety and customization can paradoxically experience a loss of sales because customers feel overwhelmed by the number of product configurations offered. Sales configurators may be a solution for avoiding this paradox, but relatively few studies have focused on the characteristics they should have in order to overcome this problem. Furthermore, empirical investigation on the effectiveness of the recommendations made by these studies has been hindered by the lack of psychometrically sound measurement items and scales. This paper conceptualizes, develops and validates five capabilities that sales configurators should deploy in order to avoid the product variety paradox: namely, focused navigation, flexible navigation, easy comparison, benefit-cost communication, and user-friendly product-space description capabilities. The measurement instrument is hoped to support advancements in both research and practice.