Bolstering and restoring feelings of competence via the IKEA effect

By Daniel Mochon, Michael I. Norton, Dan Ariely. 2012

215 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We examine the underlying process behind the IKEA effect, which is defined as consumers' willingness to pay more for self-created products than for identical products made by others, and explore the factors that influence both consumers' willingness to engage in self-creation and the utility that they derive from such activities. We propose that creating products fulfills consumers' psychological need to signal competence to themselves and to others, and that feelings of competence associated with self-created products lead to their increased valuation. We demonstrate that the feelings of competence that arise from assembling products mediate their increased value (Experiment 1), that affirming consumers' sense of self decreases the value they derive from their creations (Experiment 2), and that threatening consumers' sense of self increases their propensity to make things themselves (Experiments 3A and 3B).

Subfields: Applied Psychology, Cognitive Neuroscience, Marketing

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e08181c89f1decad8220f65a06c83d24d5cf614d

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Citations in the corpus

Consumer participation in the design and realization stages of production: How self-production shapes consumer evaluations and relationships to products (2014, background): “For example, Mochon, Norton, and Ariely (2012) and Norton et al. (2012) provided step-by-step directions to participants to make origami figures.”
Doing it the hard way: How low control drives preferences for high-effort products and services (2014, background): “…effort (e.g., Aronson and Mills 1959; Kim and Labroo 2011; Kivetz and Simonson 2002; Nielsen and Escalas 2010; Norton, Mochon, and Ariely 2012), especially in the context of gift giving (Moreau, Bonney, and Herd 2011), or after others have invested effort (e.g., Kruger et al. 2004; Morales 2005).”
Brands as Rivals: Consumer Pursuit of Distinctiveness and the Role of Brand Anthropomorphism (2018, background): “Similarly, Mochon, Norton, and Ariely (2012) show that a feeling of control over one’s environment is the driving force behind consumers’ selfexpressive tasks (e.g., assembling furniture).”
The Effort Paradox: Effort Is Both Costly and Valued (2018, background): “The value of effort also helps to explain the benefits that can accrue to consumer goods that require effort on the part of the consumer, such as ‘do-it-yourself’ products [11,69].”
I’m Proud of It: Consumer Technology Appropriation and Psychological Ownership (2015, unknown): “Notably, Mochon et al. (2012) explain that their measure of pride “synthesizes two constructs: one about personal feelings of pride and another about consumers’ desire to show off their creations to others” suggesting their conceptualization of pride may be more hubristic than authentic.”
Value cocreation in service interactions (2015, background): “Feeling a connection between participants increases the chances of pro-social behavior during the interaction (Mochon et al., 2012).”
Theory of value co-creation: a systematic literature review (2014, background): “, 2008; and the research on the Ikea effect (Mochon et al., 2012; Norton et al., 2012) quotes Vargo and Lusch (2004), as well as Prahalad and Ramaswamy (2000).”
Ten years of value cocreation: An integrative review (2016, background): “However, these positive impacts depend on whether consumers regard participants as similar to themselves and skilled (Franke and Schreier, 2008; Fuchs et al., 2013; Mochon et al., 2012; Schreier et al., 2012; Thompson and Malaviya, 2013).”
Inspired to Create: Awe Enhances Openness to Learning and the Desire for Experiential Creation (2018, background): “…creation motives has focused on how competence and autonomy might stimulate the undertaking of creation-oriented tasks (Dahl and Moreau 2007; Mochon, Norton, and Ariely 2012; Moreau and Herd 2010; Watson and Shove 2008), so we also check whether awe’s ability to enhance the desire to engage…”