You’re no doubt familiar with IKEA as the king of flatpack furniture. But you may not be aware that the Swedish company’s name is also associated with a cognitive bias. It’s all to do with how we assign greater value to objects when we make or assemble them ourselves. Now that might seem counterintuitive but it’s become an established marketing tactic over the years.
Studies by American researchers Michael Norton, Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely backed it up with evidence. When releasing their findings, they coined the term “Ikea effect” to describe the bias. They ran a series of tests to find out if their belief in the Ikea effect was well-founded. One part saw test subjects divided into two groups. The first group was tasked with assembling Ikea furniture items, while the other group simply examined the same items, only they’d been pre-built for them.
What was their evidence? Why on earth would we want to pay more for doing more work ourselves? Does the IKEA effect come into play in other areas of life? In under 3 minutes, we answer your questions!
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A Bababam Originals podcast. Written and produced by Joseph Chance.
In partnership with upday UK.
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