 Bolstering and restoring feelings of competence via the IKEA effectDaniel Mochon, Michael I. Norton and Dan Ariely International Journal of Research in Marketing, 2012, vol. 29, issue 4, 363-369 Abstract: 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). Keywords: Effort; Co-creation; Competence; Value; Self-signal (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ijrema:v:29:y:2012:i:4:p:363-369 DOI: 10.1016/j.ijresmar.2012.05.001 Access Statistics for this article International Journal of Research in Marketing is currently edited by Roland Rust More articles in International Journal of Research in Marketing from Elsevier |
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