What does the venerable company Ikea have to do with the world of associations, you might ask. This was the same thought I had while attending a seminar on association marketing and membership engagement that my organization, the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives (PCAAE), held recently.
To be honest, this was the first time I heard about the “Ikea effect” and it was our speaker, Arianna Rehak, director at the US-based AssociationSuccess.org, who brought up this topic in relation to how associations can learn from this phenomenon. So I Googled Ikea effect and this was what I found out:
Wikipedia describes the Ikea effect as a cognitive bias in which consumers place a disproportionately high value on products they partially created. The term is derived from the name of Swedish manufacturer and furniture retailer Ikea, which sells many furniture products that require assembly.
The Ikea effect was identified and named by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School, Daniel Mochon of Yale and Dan Ariely of Duke, who published the results of three studies in 2011. These experiments demonstrated that self-assembly affects the evaluation of a product by its consumers. The results suggest that when people construct a particular product themselves, even if they do a poor job of it, they value the end result more than if they had not put any effort into its creation.
So again, what is the connection of the Ikea effect in the association context? Rehak aptly puts it: “When you’re involved in building something, you see its value, and you have a stronger emotional attachment to it.” This is exactly what happens when you are building a community like an association.
In my column on January 10, “Community as a Strategy,” I mentioned that the PCAAE was set up around building a community of like-minded and same-purposed institutions and individuals, helping each other solve problems, sharing knowledge and information, and establishing cooperation and partnerships for growth and sustainability. I believe this is true with any association and member-serving organization.
Right from its beginning, when we held a town-hall consultation with PCAAE members on November 20, 2013, when the “association of associations” was launched at the PICC, I now realize from hindsight that the Ikea effect had set in.
The Ikea effect is also in play when you engage with your members through volunteering in committees and task forces, their participation in online and offline networking, as well as in forging friendships and collegial relationships among members.
I can cite three takeaways for associations when marketing for membership generation and when engaging with members: (1) explore how you can add in an aspect of “member-owned creation” into your association’s service offering and activities; (2) promote and market these offerings as value-added experiences; and (3) personalize them early on to inspire a sense of ownership. See how the IKEA effect works in your association!
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The column contributor, Octavio “Bobby” Peralta, is concurrently the secretary-general of the Association of Development Financing Institutions in Asia and the Pacific (ADFIAP) and CEO of the Philippine Council of Associations and Association Executives. PCAAE enjoys the support of ADFIAP, the Tourism Promotions Board and the Philippine International Convention Center. E-mail: obp@adfiap.org.