The IKEA Effect – When Labor Leads to Love – a great article from February 2009 number of “Harvard Business Review” by Michael Norton. The point he is making in this article got me to think throughly about Leadpile Exchange and our approach towards our clients.
The IKEA Effect is the phenomenon where people construct things themselves, and they come to overvalue their creations. It is the same principle that operating systems play in our lives. The more we learn a product and use it, the more attached we become to it.
In one of the studies people were asked to fold origami and than to bid on their own creations. It appears that, everyone was constantly willing to pay more for their own creations.
There is one limitation – the IKEA effect works as long as the labor is fruitful. If the participants failed to accomplish the tasks, the IKEA effect disappeared.
How many of you are using Google AdWords – as you probably know, there is not a lot of support out there to tell exactly what you should be doing, and even if you call the Support center, you will spend at least an hour to get only few ideas on how to manage your account. The idea behind it is the same, the more time you spend in handling your account, and assuming that your are getting an accomplishment out of it, that will motivate you to spend even more time and money.
One major downside of the IKEA effect is when managers are spending an overwhelming amount of time on projects that are not bringing revenue, or are even destined to fail. Of course their attachment to the project is determined by the time they spent in creating it. No matter if the company or their customers values it, they are determined to keep the project.
Leadpile is determined to listen to our clients, and create value in the Affiliate Marketing and lead-gen world – fortunately we have amazing people working here (strong too), so no one will spend too much time doing useless stuff.

Thanks to “Harvard Business Review” and Michael Norton for the great article