High technology, performance and price: the case of additive manufacturing through desktop 3D printers

The adoption and development of high technology situations such as additive manufacturing is complicated because the technology system characteristics used by manufacturers are different than the technology-performance characteristics evaluated by customers. This study explores the relationship between the desktop 3D printers' underlying technology characteristics, its performance, and its price. Data were collected for 107 Fused Deposition Modelling desktop 3D printers from 2014 to 2019. Twelve technology characteristics were included such as the build volume, the material of the build platform and whether it is heated, the number of extruders, type of movements and whether it uses open source software, hardware or filament. It was found that 8% of the technology characteristics only matter for performance, 33% only matter for price, 33% for neither and 25% of the characteristics matter for both performance and price.