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The Ikea Effect:
How to Use It To Boost Your Business Online?
By: Marina Kostina, Wired@Heart
Do you remember the Seinfeld episode when Kramer Unfortunately, many online interactions are run in
came up with an idea for a pizza place where you a very controlled manner, as if the business wants
make your own pizza? Well, as funny as this concept to somehow compensate for the lack of physical
is, Kramer intuitively understood human psychology: connection and provides almost no room for
making people feel autonomous has a lot of benefits independent learning, struggle, and discovery.
for your business. A very popular Swedish company
named Ikea, with a large portion of its furniture The majority of marketing experts also teach you to
products requiring some self-assembly, recognizes this position yourself as an expert, or the “guruâ€. While
secret and uses it to their advantage. This approach the status of an expert is great for your brand, it really
even became a special term in psychology. “The Ikea impedes the online learning of your customers. I suggest
effectâ€refers to the cognitive bias of consumers placing that instead of “giving†knowledge to your customers
a very high value on an object that they partially built (where you are the ultimate source of wisdom, and
themselves. This supports the idea that autonomy is a your customer is a passive recipient of it), you develop a
key ingredient for customer satisfaction. space where your customers can co-create the learning
process with you and other participants.
So what is autonomy? Autonomy is a perception of
control over environment. It is also a feeling of having Here are some practical suggestions for increasing
options and choices in life. According to research, autonomy and engagement in your online courses,
when we believe that stress is unavoidable, this stress webinars, and training workshops.
will be highly toxic and destructive to our bodies.
However, if we feel more in control over stress triggers, 1 Introduce main concepts but allow the
they will have significantly less effect on our lives. The
sense of autonomy therefore becomes crucial for our participants to figure out their own solutions.
psychological, emotional and even physical well being. For instance, you can assign your participants to
different groups, and then ask them to discuss how
In an online environment, autonomy becomes one they can solve a problem or overcome a challenge.
of the most important requirements for successful
functioning and learning, as we often feel isolated 2 Provide different options for assignments. When
and lost in cyberspace. Autonomy is also highly
connected with online engagement. If your audience people have a choice, they feel empowered and
feels autonomous while interacting with your online will be more engaged with your content.
products, courses, workshops and webinars, they will
be more engaged with them. 3 Ask your participants to co-create course content
with you. Maybe they will submit a case study that
can be used as an illustration of a key concept, or
maybe they can find images or other examples
for your materials.
