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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:
The IKEA effect is a cognitive bias that can influence the outcome and perceived value of products to a big degree. People tend to place high value on products they partially have created. Hence, the name IKEA effect. It is derived from the Swedish furniture retailer famous for products that require to be assembled by the customers.
Products designed by IKEA and LEGO are great examples of this psychological effect. Designers must have the IKEA effect in mind when designing solutions and use it when appropriate.
The more the needs for customization and co-production are present in your target audience the more the IKEA effect is relevant for you as a designer. The effect can help you instill feelings of competence in the user when the task is completed successfully.
The IKEA effect will create stronger bond between the user and the product. The effort that users will put into completing the product to a complete state will transform into love for that product. The subjective value will be higher in comparison to a product that hasn't cost any effort.
It is important to point out that the IKEA effect is not about putting the effort be it small or big, it is more about the completion of the task. The IKEA effect is present when the user can enjoy the completed task and the product. If the product is disassembled soon after the assembling the effect is lost.
[...] People are willing to pay more for products they create than equivalent pre-assembled products. The general rule is the higher the contribution the higher the valuation is. Yet, if the effort required is too big or the contribution too small, people won't probably complete the task. The IKEA effect is possible only when the user actually completes the task.
-- submitted from IRC
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 21 2017, @12:30PM (3 children)
See subject.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Sunday May 21 2017, @02:41PM (2 children)
-- https://gedkinsgmu.wordpress.com/2017/02/26/betty-crocker-first-lady-of-mass-culture/ [wordpress.com]
Boyd's essay:
A Creativity Lesson From Betty Crocker. Subtracting an essential element creates unexpected value.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inside-the-box/201401/creativity-lesson-betty-crocker [psychologytoday.com]
(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 21 2017, @04:40PM (1 child)
For those unfamiliar with this common anecdote (and who don't want to click on links), the gist of this story is that supposedly early cake mixes (with dried eggs, dried milk, just add water) didn't sell well. But Betty Crocker introduced the "just add an egg!" idea based on a team of psychologists who told them that women wanted to show they had made some contribution to cake-making. Along with this was a bunch of Freudian BS (which most of the pleasant anecdotes today fail to recount) about women "offering their eggs to their husbands" and such. Such was the state of psychology back then.
Anyhow, despite being recounted in numerous advertising and pop psychology sources, the anecdote is only sort of true [snopes.com]. What actually happened is that cake mixes were initially successful, but market growth flattened a bit in the late 1950s. Cake mix producers wanted to sell even more product, so they looked into why some women didn't use cake mixes -- and that supposedly produced the egg theory that led to Betty Crocker's success. Sales did go up, but sales also went up for Pillsbury, who didn't adopt the "add an egg" philosophy. (If anything, "add an egg" cake mixes did sell a bit better, because they actually tasted better with better texture.)
So what really lead to further growth in the cake mix market wasn't taste or the "add an egg" philosophy. Pre-WWII homemade cakes were generally very simple, particularly in presentation. In the 1950s, though, magazines increasingly encouraged an emphasis of "style over substance" -- elaborate colorful frosting, glazes, complex manipulation and shaping of layers, etc. Such cakes required a dependable and very consistent base; making cakes from scratch was less dependable given variance in ingredients, skill of the cook, etc. So, women increasingly shifted to cake mixes as a base as they adopted the 1950s attitude toward presentation.
To be sure, there was still a significant element of participation there, and one might argue that the emergence of cake mixes led to this emphasis on frosting and presentation as way for women to continue to contribute. But all this began even earlier than the "just add an egg" Betty Crocker campaign with all its psychological analysis. And NO, just cracking an egg didn't make women feel like they had "participated" and thus could feel proud of their kitchen achievement. Instead, that was accomplished through complex presentation alternatives that frequently took more time and effort than simply making a cake from scratch.
(Score: 3, Informative) by AthanasiusKircher on Sunday May 21 2017, @04:53PM
And by the way, if you want a more accurate history of cake mix adoption and sales, you might see this account [bonappetit.com]. It goes even further toward debunking the role of the "just add an egg!" myth: as it notes, such mixes had been around for about 25 years before the innovation supposedly changed the industry.
A better analogy to the history of cake mixes would be those customers who make after-market modifications to things like IKEA products. There seems to be a whole culture online devoted to people pointing out how you can buy some cheap stuff from IKEA (or some other mostly prefabricated collection of parts) and then transform it into a something more cool for particular uses. And then you add personalized sanding, staining, and other finishing of wood, etc. The people who do this sort of thing not only seem to "bond" with their creations but love to post photos of what they did online. That's a lot more like the actual "cake mix" history.