People will pay more for furniture they assembled themselves than for the identical piece, pre-built

Consumer behavior researchers described a phenomenon later dubbed the "IKEA effect" — people assign higher value to things they put even a small amount of effort into building themselves than to identical items received already finished.

The twist: this holds true even when the self-assembled piece of furniture objectively looks worse than the factory-built version — the owner still values it higher, because part of its perceived worth comes from the labor invested, not the product itself.

This mechanism goes a long way toward explaining the success of brands selling flat-pack or DIY furniture — the customer is paying not just for the product, but for the sense of accomplishment and emotional attachment that builds up during assembly.

The stakes: this is one of many examples showing that price and value, inside a human head, don't have to match objective production costs at all — our brains tack on emotions to the bill that no accountant would ever put on a balance sheet.