When products or services are also a labor of love, customers perceive them as more valuable—and are willing to pay more
The studies showed that buyers actually associated production enjoyment with greater product quality and value, consequently increasing how much they were willing to pay for it.
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At an art fair some time ago, Jake Teeny had a puzzling conversation with an artist displaying his paintings.
“He was telling me how much he enjoyed making a specific painting,” Teeny says, “but he caught himself and added, ‘But I put a lot of work into it, and it took a long time to make it.’ Like he had to justify the fact that he enjoyed making it or I might discredit it.”
Unbeknownst to that artist, it was exactly the kind of phenomenon that Teeny, a Kellogg assistant professor of marketing, explores in his research.
Specifically, Teeny is curious about how our perception of how much someone enjoys making a product or providing a service—or their “production enjoyment”—might affect how we view the quality of that product or service. “When you hear someone say they enjoyed something, like that artist, you may think of them doing it casually or not taking it that seriously,” Teeny says.
One concern, then, is that this perception may lead us to believe that the quality of the product is lower—and potentially, make us want to pay less for it. But is this concern warranted?
[This article has been republished, with permission, from Kellogg Insight, the faculty research & ideas magazine of Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University]