A 1500 word research report on a completed study and collected data investigating the IKEA effect.
Titled: 'Research into the 'IKEA Effect' among older participants'.
Reference list included.
Research into the ‘IKEA Effect’ Among Older
Participants
The study sets out to address the lack of older aged demographics in the studies into ‘labour leads to
love’, previous studies conducted by Norton et al (2012) and Marsh et al (2018) only used younger
participants so their findings could not necessarily be applied to older people. The aim of the study
then was to investigate if there was a ‘labour leads to love effect’/’IKEA Effect’ on the older
generation, with the hypothesis being that the ‘IKEA Effect’ will influence the older participants like it
does on younger participants from previous studies. This was done by splitting participants randomly
into groups to put a bid on a box either pre-assembled or self-assembled. The results from the
investigation did show the trend that there was an effect on bid value depending on if a participant
was involved in the box’s construction, it can be concluded that the older generations are also
subject to the ‘labour leads to love’/’IKEA Effect’. A further investigation should be carried out using
a larger sample size to improve overall generalisability of the findings as only a small sample was
used.
This research further investigates whether if taking part in the construction of a product will
increase one’s view on a product’s value, if this idea holds true it is referred to as the ‘IKEA
Effect’/’labour leads to love’. The ‘IKEA Effect’ is taken from that products in ‘IKEA’ are sold as flat
pack furniture, which involves a customer having to build the product themselves, so customers put
a higher value on the product as they had a part in its’ construction. Studies have been conducted to
provide supporting evidence for this idea; the Norton et al (2012) and Marsh et al (2018) studies
both found similar findings of participants would be willing to pay more/placed higher value on
something they had built compared to something prebuilt/someone else built thus supporting the
‘IKEA Effect’ theory, they coined the term as ‘labour leads to love. However, these studies focused
on a younger age of participants Norton et al used undergraduate students (which are young adult
, Research Methods Assignment PSYC1090
aged) and Marsh et al used children aged 5 years old, younger people may have a different outlook
on value, especially young children, which is what this study tries to solve by using people of an older
demographic as participants. With regards to Marsh’s study, young children do not have a real
understanding of value compared to older people thus the findings from the study cannot be wholly
applicable to the wider population however it does imply that the ‘IKEA Effect’ does develop from a
young age.
The study consisted of a lab experiment of an independent measures design using a
participant group, recruited via social media advertisement, consisting of 20 people aged over 60
with the youngest of the group being 61 and the oldest being 79, the participant group was of mixed
sex too (9 Male and 11 Female). Upon arrival the participants were provided with an information
sheet for their session with the investigator in the lab and were given a consent form to sign.
Participants were then randomly assigned to a group, these groups determined whether a
participant was given a pre-assembled storage box or given a self-assembled storage box. The design
used for the boxes was the same for both groups (TJENA), the self-assembled group did have a
branded ‘IKEA’ box to build. The groups would then give an estimate bid to how much they would be
willing to pay for the box. Once this was done a debrief page was handed out to conclude the study.
Investigators then analysed the given bids from participants, this was done by noting down the
group a participant was in and then their given bid. Once formatted averages were made and an
independent samples t-test was conducted to finalise the results seeing if they were indeed
significant.
Results gathered from the study do suggest that having assembled a product yourself you do
place a higher value on said product. The mean average of bid from the self-assembled group was
£4.40 which was much higher than the mean average of the pre-assembled group of £2.25. The
standard deviation for the self-assembled group sat at 1.26 and for the pre-assembled group at 0.72.
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