A curious taste of The Ikea Effect.
Exploring cognitive biases or ‘blinkers’ and when we need to lose them…or when we can use them in creativity…and cuisine!
I love cooking. So does my son. He’s a bit of a foodie. So are my two daughters who no longer live at home. My husband isn’t so much. He enjoys good food and makes a mean omelette baveuse (nice and runny) but is otherwise pretty much relegated to the barbecue.
Anyway, a few months back, one of my neighbours emailed me to see if I’d be interested in a free box of pre-packed ingredients for three family meals. You know the brands who offer this: Marley Spoon, Hello Fresh and others…it’s one of those.
At first I thought it was an odd idea but then realised I had nothing in the fridge so graciously accepted her proposal.
The box arrived and we explored the ingredients, criticised the plastic packaging, got curious about the recipes and split the meals into three large brown paper bags and forced them into the fridge. Over the next three days we each had a go at tackling one of the menus. We were impressed at the way the preparation had been broken down and not unimpressed by the result: they were mostly tasty and some of the novel ideas were being mentally added to our repertoire (I’d never thought of adding grated carrot and garlic paste to my couscous!). On day three, I came into the kitchen to see my husband leaning over the A4 recipe sheet and carefully cooking up a storm and I realised we were onto something.
I have continued to order a couple of these meals a few times a month and was musing while cooking last night about what was going on. Beyond the joy of seeing hubby comfortable in in the kitchen — and the fact that this formula lightens the mental load of having to produce a daily meal — what was it that was working for us?
It occurred to me that we were experiencing the positive effects of a bias known as The Ikea Effect.
The Ikea Effect — ‘that labour alone can be sufficient to induce greater liking for the fruits of one’s labour’ — was named in a 2011 paper in the Journal of Consumer Psychology by Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon and Dan Ariely. They chose the name because products from the Swedish manufacturer typically require some assembly.
When you look up the ‘Ikea Effect’, you will generally stumble upon the story of the unsuccessful launch of cake mixes as the trigger for research into this type of bias. This story dates back to the 1950s America. What you learn is that when cake mixes were first launched by General Mills in supermarkets, they were a bit of a flop. Call it suspicion or maybe even shame, but for many housewives (yes, sorry, but that was absolutely the target audience), making cakes from a packet took away the sense of pride and satisfaction that they usually derived from baking a cake from scratch.
According to the ‘Dichter anecdote’ (so named after Ernest Dichter who ran focus groups for General Mills to solve the problem), what was interesting was that the addition of a simple ‘fresh’ egg made the difference.
Laura Shapiro, author of Something from the Oven: Reinventing Dinner in 1950s America, noted that: “The greater sense of effort gained from a little extra labour is believed to have been essential to the subsequent success of the cake mix.”
To empirically confirm this phenomenon, and its limits, Michael Norton, Daniel Mochin and Dan Ariely conducted four experiments in which they famously asked participants to fold origami cranes and frogs, assemble Ikea boxes, and build sets of Lego. They then asked the builders to bid for their creations and compared the prices of these bids with other evaluative measures from people who hadn’t built them.
According to their study:
▶ Builders consistently outbid the non-builders.
▶ Participants that were asked to assemble their own boxes bid higher than participants who were given pre-assembled boxes.
▶ Participants who had assembled their own boxes also rated their affection for the boxes higher than did non-assemblers.
▶ Non-builders in origami bid higher for origamis made by experts but lower for origamis assembled by the builders.
▶ Builders valued their own origami as highly as they did the expert figures.
The groups were asked to assemble and disassemble identical Ikea boxes. The first group was allowed to complete their assembly, while the second group was asked to stop midway, though was given all the necessary tools to assemble the boxes following the experiment. When asked to bid on the boxes, the first group bid on average three times higher for their boxes.
The trio also realised that being successful in their assembly was important: “When people had failed in their attempts to fold paper cranes and construct Lego sets, the Ikea effect weakened — as it also did when they were forced to dismantle their creations,” stated the study.
Interestingly, the Ikea Effect seems to work even when people have no opportunity to personalise their creations — as with the Ikea boxes and Lego sets.
While most participants’ origami skills left much to be desired, they loved their imperfectly personalised products all the more. Builders valued their crumpled crane-like creations nearly five times as much as non-builders. Beauty, it seems, is in the eye of the builder.
Together, these experiments demonstrate a widespread cognitive bias wherein we think our personal efforts translate to increased value.
Authors Mortimer, Mathmann and Grimmer highlight that the Ikea Effect goes beyond the simple notion of ownership: “The idea is that an individual who makes a sacrifice to achieve a goal rationalises the effort by attributing greater value to the achievement.”
Interestingly, these pre-planned meals require more than assembly and much more than a simple egg; you receive the ingredients but you make it from scratch. I think that in my mind there is less ‘ownership’ and pride in these meals than those that I conjure up from my imagination but the fact that we still have to inject both labour and love is key.
How can we USE this in our pursuit of creativity?
Fo people and organisations looking to dial up creative outputs, I think there are some simple ways to harness The Ikea Effect.
If people value ideas into which they have injected a labour of love, they may be more inclined to defend and implement them. This motivation could be harnessed by innovation leads to ensure that participants in idea generation workshops follow through with ideas that emerged in creative sessions and that business owners show more commitment to seeing the ideas they worked on come to life.
Engage people in ideas that you hope to see implemented. Find ways of getting them to improve on them so that they too have put effort into them and value them more. I work with customers to co-create ideas by running workshops on half- finished concepts where they can really apply themselves. Within reason, the rougher the prototype, the more people get involved and take ownership. Consider using crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter. Your investors may be doubly committed if they not only help fund it but also fall in love with the product.
Whatever your creative idea, find a way to have your customer ‘add an egg’. Two brands which have tried this in recent years are Toblerone and Coke. There is a pop-up stand in my nearest department store every Christmas that invites customers to personalise their Toblerone box with the name of a loved one. They appear to sell out well before Christmas Eve.
In 2011, Coca Cola Australia ran a ‘Share a Coke’ campaign which involved changing the traditional wrapping around the Coca-Cola bottle to say ‘Share a Coke with…’ and a name. In Australia, the top 150 most popular names were printed onto millions of bottles and the campaign was so well-received that other countries around the world adopted it with their own unique twists.
An obvious way of using this bias to your advantage is to offer products or services that allow the user to finish the task in some way. This is the meal ingredient home delivery concept but it could also be any DIY product.
It’s important to note that if a user or a customer is involved in the building or assembly or customisation of a particular product but unsuccessfully completes the task, they will not value that product more. In fact, research shows that “labour leads to love” only when that labour is proven successful.
The lesson is to inject some labour and make the task slightly more challenging but make sure that the task is achievable. If you want your users or customers to value your product more, you have to set them up for success. Make it easy for them to contribute to a new idea or at least perceive that they can.
Losing The Ikea Effect
Staying in the realm of food, I noticed an interesting example of how you could counter the Ikea Effect on the Australian MasterChef TV show.
The contestants had been split into two teams and had been given the task of creating their own menu from scratch. They had designed their three-course meal and preparations were well underway when they were given a surprising twist: each team had to abandon their plans, switch teams and cook dishes they never intended to make. It took both teams a while to adjust and let go of what they had planned to do. What I found interesting was how they brought their own creative twist to the menus of the opposing team. The output may well have been more interesting through the forced adaptation — neither the judges nor the audience had the opportunity to taste what had initially been planned.
We sometimes apply this type of thinking in creative workshops and have teams move around to improve on the ideas of other teams. The aim is to bring diverse perspectives and identify any gaps but also to break away from too much ownership of the idea. Not only does this give everyone more exposure to other examples of the tools in action or the ideas but it may neatly counter the Ikea Effect and promote more of a sense of ownership access to the pool of ideas.
Play around with this bias. Harness the passion and the ownership and challenge the subjective evaluation. It can only help you innovate more effectively. Don’t continue to devote resources to an idea just because you’ve already put in a considerable labour of love.
Rachel is a creativity and innovation facilitator and trainer. She is also the author of ‘UNBLINKERED: The quirky biases that get in the way of creative thinking…and how to bust them’ soon available on Amazon.
