You can't ignore IKEA stores. You may not know how they got their name. That's why we're here:it's an acronym from the first name of their founder, Ingvar Kamprad, Elmtaryd (the name of the family farm where he was born) and Agunnaryd (the village where the Swedish billionaire grew up, who died on 27/1 of 2018, at the age of 91 - he had retired from the business at 87). As for the choice of yellow and blue colors, they correspond to those of the flag of Sweden.
In 1943, the then 17-year-old Kamprad began making 'replicas' of the table his uncle Ernst had in the kitchen. Five years later, he 'opened up' the business making general furniture for mail orderers. The first store opened in 1958, in Älmhult, a town in the Småland region where he spent his entire life. He called it Möbel-IKEA. That is, IKEA furniture. Which wasn't furniture. They were the pieces of wood that made up any piece of furniture. The connection was undertaken by the buyer.
In 1956, Kamprad introduced the world to 'flat packaging', which 'saved' him the cost of storage and transport, to the benefit of consumers who could now more easily buy something they needed. It is enough that they wanted to 'put in' the work of the connection, the cost of which was also 'saved' by the businessman. In general, Kamprad was economical, with a New Yorker article revealing that in the last years of his life - and while he was a billionaire - he drove a Volvo that accompanied him for decades and never failed to recycle the 'bags' of tea.
For the record, towards the end of his life he confessed that the biggest mistake he had made in his life was his involvement with the Swedish fascist movement of the 1940s.
In 1963 it expanded to Norway, in 1969 to Denmark, where it built an empire before moving out of Scandinavia in 1973, with Switzerland. Followed by West Germany, Japan (1974), Australia, Canada, Hong Kong (1975), Singapore, Netherlands (1978), France, Spain (1981), Belgium (1984), USA (1985), Great Britain (1987), Italy (1989) and since it will take some time for the exact expansion, let's focus on Greece being added to the map in 1999, while eleven years later, the logo appeared for the first time and in Latin America - in Santo Dominico, Dominican Republic.
Obviously, at 17 he had no idea that he would change the way the planet would perceive furniture. How much more, that it will develop into a phenomenon.
The IKEA Effect was the subject of three studies by the Harvard Business School in 2011. The 'godfather' of the phenomenon, Michael I. Norton, a professor in the business administration department of the world's third leading university - after the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Stanford and based on the QS World University Rankings) - defined it as follows:“The work itself may be sufficient to evoke a greater 'liking' of the doer towards the 'fruits' of his effort. Even building a standard office, work that is laborious and lonely can lead people to overvalue their (often 'poor' construction) creation".
In short, when we try to make something ourselves, our emotional state is affected to the extent that we consider that what we produce with our hands is the most valuable of all. Even if it's not the best. And just like that, we reached the global trend of DIY (Do it yourself), which started 90 years ago.
The beginning is placed in the cake mixes
In the early 1930s, a package of ready-made cake mix appeared on the market for the first time. Pennsylvania creator John D. Duff's goal was to do something with his excess molasses. When he managed to turn the syrup into powder, a new world had opened up before him. In the development phase, he 'made' a mixture with dehydrated flour for gingerbread (do you want to call it a ginger cookie - i.e. ginger?).
In 1933 he obtained the patent (for the process of creating a dehydrated flour mixture) and in 1935 he secured the same for the ready-made cake mix. All the housewife had to do, to make the result tastier, was to add eggs. He had come to the conclusion that housewives generally preferred fresh eggs.
It turned out that what the housewives preferred was their convenience, but as long as they did something (even the minimum). This simple gesture was enough for the women to satisfy the need they felt not to be uninvolved in what they were serving. It was enough for them to feel that everything was not ready - and therefore 'unnecessary'.
"We place more value on the things we've worked to create, whether it's something as simple as building a house with Lego, or something more complex - like affordable furniture," the experts pointed out in confirming the existence of the phenomenon that bore her name IKEA. To tell the truth, of course, their work 'stepped' on earlier researches, related to the 'justification of the effort'. In other words, it had already become known that we value more what we have worked for - ideally a lot. This data was given to the planet by the American social psychologist, Leon Festinger, in 1957. He had taken the baton from the theory of the psychologist Edgar H. Schein (Massachusetts Institute of Technology - known as MIT), on brainwashing.
He was the one who came up with this term, studying the effects of systematic propaganda in 'implanting' new ideas and perceptions in our minds.
But what did Harvard do
At Norton's suggestion, after 68 years of IKEA operations, from Ingvar Kamprad's first store (today there are 445 in 53 countries on the planet - in 2018 products with a total value of 38.8 billion euros were sold) volunteers took part in four different processes .
The first was to inspect a pre-made IKEA box or build one themselves. Then he asked them to make an offer, for the box. If it was higher than the amount the researchers had set, they would pay to buy it. If it was smaller, they wouldn't be able to keep it. They were also asked to put a price on their box. On average, the volunteers bid for the self-made boxes 62% more than they paid for the pre-made box. Most said they liked the box they made better than the one they inspected.
The second was about creating origami (in the shape of a crane or a frog). Participants paid 460% more for their own creations than for those created by others, including experts. The researchers also discovered that the participants believed that others would place more value on their own origami - while at the same time they did not particularly value the amateur creations of others.
The third had 10 and 12 piece Lego sets. Participants were paired up and asked to rate each other's work. They were also asked to either 'build' a Lego set that was in the pre-build phase, or build the set from scratch, or 'build' it and then deconstruct it. Again each gave more value to what he had done - than to his partner - without focusing on whether it was the prepared version or the one from scratch.
The fourth and final process asked the volunteers to build an IKEA box, once again. Except the researchers - randomly - asked half of them to stop the effort midway. As expected, unfinished boxes were not valued as highly as completed ones. And that was interesting, as it was specified that if they 'achieved' the price, they could finish the job later.
Norton and his colleagues wrote that "work leads to love only when the work is successfully completed". The IKEA effect is weakened, in cases where a) we do not complete the construction and b) we are forced to disconnect what they have built because there is a mistake.
At the same time, the IKEA Effect works when people don't have the opportunity to make their creations more personal - something that happened with Lego sets and IKEA boxes, but not with origami, even if the result was far from perfect. from 'satisfactory'.
Given the success of the do-it-yourself model, quite a few imitators emerged, until we reached the time when we enjoy studying YouTube tutorials to build from scratch what we want to have in our home. Not always successfully. But as the IKEA Effect teaches, effort counts - and one, two, three, five, ten you will succeed.
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