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Anyone who has spent an afternoon assembling a flat-pack bookcase knows the peculiar satisfaction of standing back to admire the finished, slightly wobbly result. According to a series of experiments published in 2012 by Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely, that satisfaction comes at a measurable price: people tend to value things they have built themselves considerably more than identical items made by someone else. The researchers named this the "IKEA effect", after the Swedish furniture company famous for making its customers do the assembly.
In one study, participants either built a simple storage box themselves or were given one that had already been assembled. When asked how much they would pay for their box, the builders offered significantly more. In another, people folded origami frogs and cranes and were then asked to bid for them. Despite the amateurish quality of their creations, they were willing to pay almost as much for their own models as for those folded by experts, whereas other participants saw the amateur versions as nearly worthless.
Crucially, the effect depended on completion. When participants built something and then took it apart, or were prevented from finishing, the extra value largely disappeared. Labour, it seems, leads to love only when it leads to success.
Why should effort increase affection? One explanation is that completing a task makes us feel competent, and the object becomes a reminder of that feeling. Another is that we justify the time and energy we have invested: having worked hard on something, we are reluctant to admit it was not worth the trouble.
Businesses have long understood something similar. A frequently told story, though its accuracy is disputed, concerns instant cake mixes in the 1950s, which supposedly sold better once manufacturers required the cook to add a fresh egg, giving them a sense of having made the cake themselves. Whether or not the story is true, many companies now invite customers to design their own shoes or build their own products, partly because people value the results more.
The effect has a less flattering side, however. It may help to explain why managers overvalue projects they have personally developed, or why people cling to ideas they have worked hard on, even when evidence suggests they should let them go. Recognising the IKEA effect, then, is not only a lesson for marketers; it is also a useful warning for anyone who has ever found it difficult to judge their own work objectively.