Do you own IKEA furniture? Have you Built a Bear? Do you own any of those lovely mugs with family photos on them?

photo credit: calmenda

I’m no handyman, so when I look at my IKEA furniture, I look at it with pride. Similarly, I know my parents absolutely love those mugs they have of me as a kid. Both these goods are  examples of participatory commerce; we had a part in building them.

Slowly, but surely, participatory commerce has been making its mark in our lives ubiquitously. It’s an alternative business model, where you can actually save money on labor and consulting research. It’s a method of creating value which is almost entirely foolproof. Most importantly, it has already dawned on us without us making a big fuss about it. I’m talking about participatory commerce (“p-commerce”).

Research conducted with my colleagues Daniel Mochon, of Yale University, and Dan Ariely, of Duke University, shows that labor enhances affection for its results. When people construct products themselves, from bookshelves to Build-a-Bears, they come to overvalue their (often poorly made) creations. We call this phenomenon the IKEA effect,in honor of the wildly successful Swedish manufacturer whose products typically arrive with some assembly required.

In one of our studies we asked people to fold origami and then to bid on their own creations along with other people’s. They were consistently willing to pay more for their own origami. In fact, they were so enamored of their amateurish creations that they valued them as highly as origami made by experts.

- Michael Norton, Harvard Business Review

There certainly is some sentimental value in the things we create. The IKEA effect basically is a name for the idea that we value things more if we’ve taken part in building it. This effort we put in naturally increases the perceived value of the good that we’d purchased.

While e-commerce was all about convenience and security, p-commerce is about community empowerment and discovery. It’s a broader movement that goes beyond ‘crowdsourcing’ which in the past has been quite a niche concept.

- Daniel Gulati, The Next Web Interview

We are operating in a time where companies are looking for new ways to engage their clients and customers (hm, maybe you should ditch that social media “expert”). What better way to engage customers than allowing them to tailor the product that they paid money for to their liking?

But what can you do? You’re no IKEA or Build a Bear. You don’t have the financial muscle that these organizations do to set up a complex commerce system and all that. I can feel your pain. Let’s talk smaller-scale.

Gulati’s company Fashionstake connects professional designers with a community of fashion lovers. They set up a virtual Voting Booth where the community is able to vote on what designs they like best and decide on which designers Fashionstake will feature in their marketplace.

So, let’s say you have a blog. You’ve even started building a community around it. You want to start building your mailing list and monetizing now: so you’re writing an eBook that you can sell or give away. You’re brainstorming ideas to fill up your book with. Which ones should you put in and which ones should you exclude?

Perhaps you can set up a poll where your readers tell you which themes they want to hear most about. Or which ideas are most appealing to them. Or which sample chapters are their favourites. The possibilities are actually almost endless. Leo Babauta from Zen Habits wrote his Focus Manifesto with input from his readers; we’d have the ability to post comments and he’d upload his latest drafts and iterations to the book website.

You’ll start seeing a noticeable improvement in community engagement, and quite possibly in reaction to your work as well. Integrate p-commerce into your creations. You will be pleasantly surprised!

Further Reading:

• Empowered Involvement
• 8th Bridge Blog

Drawing more information from the well of Dailytech, I’ve discovered to my delight that Motorola will definitely remain in the mobile phone game.  In fact, Motorola’s so dedicated that they’ve decided to split into two separate companies – one dedicated to mobile phones and the other focused upon broadband and mobility services that the corporate companies and governments are just eatin’ right up.

This is great news.  A few months ago, I wrote about this predicament mostly with pessimism and regret because of the seeming lack of hope for the company.  However, I must say that I’m awed by Motorola’s resiliency and dedication to the business.  Damn, I feel good.

Now I don’t mean to be rude, but I hope they finally succeed this time around.  They need a revolutionary product like the original RAZR, one that challenges everything that we’ve come to define a cell phone as.  Sure, they can improve upon the products and step the camera’s megapixels up all they want – but I think all that has already come to a peak.  Someone out there is going to figure out an excellent idea, and once they do, they’re going to make their company extremely rich people.

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Visit:

http://www.motorola.com/mediacenter/news/detail.jsp?globalObjectId=9430_9359_23