Unformatted Attachment Preview
Christoph Fuchs, Martin Schreier, & Stijn M.J. van Osselaer
The Handmade Effect: What’s Love
Got to Do with It?
Despite the popularity and high quality of machine-made products, handmade products have not disappeared,
even in product categories in which machinal production is common. The authors present the first systematic set
of studies exploring whether and how stated production mode (handmade vs. machine-made) affects product
attractiveness. Four studies provide evidence for the existence of a positive handmade effect on product
attractiveness. This effect is, to an important extent, driven by perceptions that handmade products symbolically
“contain love.” The authors validate this love account by controlling for alternative value drivers of handmade
production (effort, product quality, uniqueness, authenticity, and pride). The handmade effect is moderated by two
factors that affect the value of love. Specifically, consumers indicate stronger purchase intentions for handmade
than machine-made products when buying gifts for their loved ones but not for more distant gift recipients, and they
pay more for handmade gifts when purchased to convey love than simply to acquire the best-performing product.
Keywords: handmade, machine-made, production mode, product attractiveness, love, contagion
Online Supplement: http://dx.doi.org/10.1509/jm.14.0018
I
vision series titled Paul Martin’s Handmade Revolution).
Considering the high quality of machinal production (Liebl
and Roy 2003; Markoff 2012), it is not clear a priori if and
why product attractiveness is increased by marketing a
product as handmade (vs. machine-made or not mentioning
the production mode). Of course, one might argue that a
positive handmade effect must exist, given that marketers
frequently choose to present their products as handmade.
However, in our marketplace observations, whether a product is advertised as handmade tends not to be manipulated
and therefore might be confounded with many other factors
such as price points, materials used, or design elements.
Thus, we believe that there is a need for a controlled empirical test of the existence of an effect of presenting a product
as handmade on that product’s attractiveness. To our surprise, we found no such test in the literature.
In the current study, we therefore aim to assess the
effect of stated production mode on product attractiveness
by manipulating whether the same product is presented to
consumers as handmade (vs. machine-made). Conditional
on the existence of a handmade effect, our second main
objective is to explore one of the processes that might
underlie the effect as well as its boundary conditions and
moderators. We limit our analysis to Western consumers
(by drawing on diverse European and North American consumer samples) and discuss the generalizability of our
theory to non-Western societies in our “General Discussion” section. It is also important to note that we focus on
the way companies communicate the production mode (i.e.,
as handmade vs. machine-made) rather than the actual,
physical production mode. As has been the case since the
times of the ancient Assyrian loom (Barber 2013), and
probably even before that, purely handmade production is
The hand follows the heart. Only the hand can make what
goes back through the hand to the heart.
—The philosophy of Käthe Kruse, an international
producer of handmade toys and dolls1
n an era of technological advancement and widespread
robotization, in which machines produce high-quality
products to exacting specifications, it seems ironic that
products are increasingly being promoted as “handmade.”
Indeed, there are products explicitly advertised as handmade in many categories, such as sandwiches and bread
(Pret A Manger, Udi’s), soaps and cosmetics (Lush), guitars
(Candelas), sneakers (Vans), eyewear (Armani), knives (Cut
Brooklyn), furniture and household products (Etsy), wine
(Columbia Crest), and tableware (Gmundner). Some even
speak of a “handmade revolution” (see, e.g., the BBC tele-
1http://kaethekruse.de/en/77/3cf9b8a5de66f1ddd9a2eb3ecb02014e/
unternehmensphilosophie.html, (accessed January 20, 2015).
Christoph Fuchs is Professor of Marketing, TUM School of Management,
Technische Universität München (TUM), and Visiting Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (e-mail: christoph.fuchs@tum.de). Martin
Schreier is Professor of Marketing, Department of Marketing, WU Vienna
University of Economics and Business (e-mail: martin.schreier@wu.ac.
at). Stijn M.J. van Osselaer is Professor of Marketing, Samuel Curtis Johnson School of Management, Cornell University (e-mail: stijn.vanosselaer@
cornell.edu). The authors gratefully acknowledge financial and logistical
support from the Erasmus Research Institute of Management. They also
thank the JM review team, Nicole Mead, and audiences at Baruch College, University of Chicago, University of Colorado at Boulder, Erasmus
University, Newcastle University, WU Vienna, and the Northeast Marketing
Conference at Yale for their comments.
© 2015, American Marketing Association
ISSN: 0022-2429 (print), 1547-7185 (electronic)
98
Journal of Marketing
Vol. 79 (March 2015), 98–110
rare. Almost no production process currently involves no
machines (e.g., a maker of handmade knives uses a machine
to sharpen the knives). However, many machinal production processes involve some form of human contact. Thus,
it is often difficult to objectively categorize a product as
completely handmade or completely machine-made (Barber
2013), which provides marketing managers with considerable freedom regarding whether to present their products as
handmade (vs. machine-made or to not mention the product’s production mode). Thus, rather than the precise role of
machines versus hands in the actual production process, we
are interested in consumers’ perceptions of products that are
marketed as being handmade. For our research purpose, we
thus define a handmade versus machine-made product as
one that is presented (e.g., by the producing company) to
consumers as being made by hand or a hand process and not
by a machine or a machinal process.
This article makes the following contributions. First,
and across a variety of product domains and samples from
three Western societies, we find that consumers perceive
handmade products to be more attractive. We define our
focal dependent variable, product attractiveness, as consumers’ attitudinal and behavioral predisposition toward the
underlying product using both items assessing attitude
toward the product and items probing the attractiveness of
the product for purchase (Sweldens, Van Osselaer, and
Janiszewski 2010). Notably, we find that the handmade
effect materializes against both a control group in which the
products are portrayed as machine-made and one in which
no information regarding the production mode is provided
(Study 1).
Theoretically, one of several ways this newly identified
handmade effect can be understood is in light of positive
contagion and consumer labor theory (Argo, Dahl, and
Morales 2008; Newman, Diesendruck, and Bloom 2011;
Norton, Mochon, and Ariely 2012; Rozin and Nemeroff
2002). Specifically, this line of research, in addition to
informal observations of handmade products’ marketing
materials, consumers’ online comments (e.g., consumer
blogs), and interviews with handmade producers, led us to
suspect that love may be an important driver of the handmade effect. Products labeled as handmade might be perceived to contain (and perhaps even transmit) the artisan’s
“essence” in the form of his or her love for a product and
production process in a way that machine-made products
cannot (see, e.g., the video series “Made by Hand” at
bureauofcommongoods.com). Of course, love is a sentiment that cannot be located in a product in a real, physical
sense, so it should be assumed that consumers’ perception
of a product “containing love” is of a symbolic, figurative,
“as-if” nature. In this context, “perceived love,” the term we
use throughout the article, thus refers to a consumer’s perception of an artisan’s emotion of strong attraction and passionate attachment to the product and its production process
(see also Carroll and Ahuvia 2006), which becomes symbolically embedded in the product.
Our initial suspicion that love might play a role in the
handmade effect was further corroborated by an exploratory
pilot study. In this open association pilot study, we asked
114 participants to write down their thoughts and feelings
about handmade products. Love, either in the form of the
love a handmade producer puts into the production process
or in the form of love imbued in the product, emerged as a
frequent and robust theme (e.g., “Handmade products are
… built with care and love” [#101], “I like it [handmade
product] and especially the fact that it is handmade. It is
made with love” [#53], “There is something else in that
product.… It is love” [#25]). Thus, preliminary results suggest that perceptions of love would indeed be worth examining more deeply as a potential driver of a handmade effect
on product attractiveness.
As with virtually every empirical phenomenon of substantial practical importance, the handmade effect is unlikely to
be exclusively driven by a “one and only” process. It is
important to identify potential co-determinants so we can
control for them in an attempt to isolate the role of love as
one significant driver of the potential handmade effect.
Thus, we also used the open association pilot to find other
factors that might co-determine a handmade effect on product attractiveness. We found that some respondents perceived handmade products to require more time to produce,
which might increase perceived quality, and this increased
perceived quality, in turn, might yield greater attractiveness.
Thus, handmade production might increase attractiveness
through the effort heuristic (Kruger et al. 2004). Some
respondents also associated handmade products with expensiveness and quality. Finally, some respondents suggested
that handmade products were more attractive due to their
uniqueness. Thus, the pilot study indicated the need to test
mediation of the handmade effect by perceptions of love
while controlling for perceived effort, quality, expensiveness, and uniqueness.
In the remainder of this article, we provide a more
extensive discussion of the theoretical background, followed by four empirical studies. In Study 1, we demonstrate the existence of the basic handmade effect, showing
increased product attractiveness for products presented as
handmade over the same products presented as machinemade or presented without mentioning production mode. In
Study 2, we find that love perceptions mediate the handmade effect while controlling for the alternative processes
identified in the open association pilot. Study 2 further contributes by exploring the handmade effect and the role of
perceived love as one of its drivers through moderation. We
find that the handmade effect is stronger for a gift intended
for a recipient who is emotionally closer rather than more
distant. This is because the love perceived to be in the handmade product increases the attractiveness of a gift product
more when the recipient is closer to the gift giver. In Study
3, we again moderate the link from perceived love to product attractiveness by showing that the handmade effect is
stronger when consumers’ gift giving is motivated by a
desire to convey love rather than to give the best-performing
product. Thus, this study provides support for the idea that
handmade products perceived to be imbued with love are
valued because they can convey love to the consumer
receiving the product. Finally, Study 4 demonstrates the
handmade effect through an incentive-compatible experi-
The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It? / 99
ment and shows mediation by love while controlling for
several alternative processes graciously suggested to us by
three anonymous reviewers (pride, happiness, contentment,
and authenticity). We close with a general discussion that
focuses on the managerial and theoretical implications of
the studies, limitations, and directions for further research.
In summary, these four studies show (1) the existence of a
handmade effect, (2) that the effect is driven to a significant
extent by perceptions of artisanal love, and (3) boundary
conditions of the handmade effect.
Theoretical Background
Machine-Made Versus Handmade
Since the industrial revolution, products have increasingly
been produced by machines, with human activity often limited to repetitive actions in which each person is involved in
only one or a few steps in the production process (Smith
[1776] 2003; Toffler 1980). Recently, widespread robotization has reduced the human role in the production process
even further (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2011), to such an
extent, in some cases, that people do not touch the product
at all during its production (Markoff 2012). Machinal production has many advantages. Machines tend to be consistent and can be highly precise, often yielding consistently
high-quality products (Liebl and Roy 2003; Markoff 2012).
Nevertheless, there are still many products that are sold as
being handmade even in categories such as soap and
ceramic tableware, in which high-quality machinal production is omnipresent. This article investigates if, when, and
why products marketed as handmade are perceived to be
more attractive than products marketed as being machinemade. To do so, we must begin by discussing a factor that
we hypothesize to be a core driver of a possible handmade
effect—love.
Love
Our main hypothesis is that handmade products may often be
more attractive, at least in part, because they are perceived
as being made with artisanal love and even as symbolically
containing love. Love is broadly defined as a “passionate
affection for another person” and “a feeling of warm personal attachment” (dictionary.com). In our context, we refer
to love in a more specific way: in terms of the love that
originates with a producer and whose object is the product
and its production process rather than another person. The
producer’s love for his or her work has been recognized as
a main motivational source in the psychology literature
(Baum and Locke 2004; Locke 2000). We retain the core
elements of love and passion from this literature and define
love as the producer’s warmhearted passion for a product or
its production process that, as a result, can be perceived as
symbolically embedded in the product. This conceptualization consists of the love in the production process (the product is perceived to be made with love) and the love that is
imbued in the product (the product is perceived to contain
love in a symbolic sense). We hypothesize that love is a
core mediator of a possible handmade effect. Specifically,
100 / Journal of Marketing, March 2015
we reason that consumers perceive handmade products to
be made with love and that this perception makes consumers view the product as symbolically imbued with love.
To explain our reasoning behind this hypothesis, we go
back to Karl Marx and the time of the Industrial Revolution.
Alienated versus artisanal. Since the mechanization of
production during the Industrial Revolution, several authors
have described the disadvantages of the shift away from
handmade, artisanal production. For example, Karl Marx
([1844] 2007) deplored the alienation inherent in the mode
of production in which human producers and machines
engage in an endless repetition of the same actions that constitute only a single step in a multistep production process
and that provide little intrinsic satisfaction. This mode of
production stands in stark contrast to a process in which (1)
one artisan controls and executes the entire production of a
product, (2) artisans often devote years to master their craft,
and (3) artisans invest some of their selves in their craft and
their products, deriving intrinsic satisfaction from the production process and from the product of their labor.
Artisanal love. In our informal review of information
about handmade producers and their products as well as in
the free association pilot study, we found frequent references to this emotional investment handmade producers put
into their production process and their product. Although
not to the exclusion of several other terms, emotional
investment is frequently referred to as “love” (Boatwright
and Cagan 2010; Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton
1981; Locke 2000; Norton, Mochon, and Ariely 2012), both
in terms of love for the production process (the craft) and
love for the product itself (Csikszentmihalyi and RochbergHalton 1981). Indeed, passion or love for one’s work has
been identified as an important phenomenon in the organizational behavior literature. For example, passion or love
for one’s work is a main motivation for people to engage in
the creation of new enterprises (Baum and Locke 2004;
Locke 2000). Thus, love for the production process and/or
product might be particularly strong in the context of handmade production. This notion seems broadly consistent
with recent findings in the consumer realm showing that
when consumers make something themselves, by hand,
they become emotionally attached to the fruit of their labor;
that is, handmade “labor leads to love” (Norton, Mochon,
and Ariely 2012). Although professional handmade production may be quite different from consumers’ occasional
assembly of IKEA furniture, it seems possible that professional handmade production also begets “love” by the producer. In addition, it seems possible that consumers, who
themselves have often created things with their hands and
presumably have experienced artisanal love themselves
(e.g., through the IKEA effect or such activities as cooking
or making Christmas ornaments), infer artisanal love by the
producer when they perceive the product to be handmade.
In summary, we expect that promoting products as handmade leads consumers to infer that the products were
“made with love.”
Imbued love and product attractiveness. Our next
assumption is that consumers’ inference that handmade
products are made with love will also symbolically imbue
the product itself with love. That is, being made with love
will make the product “contain love” in a symbolic, as-if
sense. This is a nonobvious step in our argumentation, but it
does not appear out of thin air. Our idea that an inferred
emotion (i.e., love) of the producer would transfer to the
produced object seems broadly consistent with Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton’s (1981) speculation. These
authors argue that through the manual production of
objects, the psychic energy of the creator might be perceived to become part of the emerging object. Part of the
“essence” of the handmade producer (the love for the product and/or the production process) may become associated
with the product, and thus, the product might be perceived
to be imbued with love.
We further expect that being perceived as imbued with
love can influence the attractiveness of a product. Through
basic processes such as evaluative conditioning (Sweldens,
Van Osselaer, and Janiszewski 2010) in which the concept
of love is paired with positive experiences and feelings
throughout a consumer’s life, products imbued with love
should be evaluated more positively. In addition, we expect
that a product that is associated with both a gift giver and
imbued love should be particularly attractive as a way to
convey love.
This “love story” might seem a bit far-fetched, even
irrational, but the idea that a product’s attractiveness can be
influenced through physical contact by a person other than
the consumer is well supported by psychological research
on contagion. For example, Argo, Dahl, and Morales (2006)
show that a T-shirt’s attractiveness is reduced when it was
tried on by an unspecified other consumer. In subsequent
research, Argo, Dahl, and Morales (2008) also show positive contagion (i.e., increased attractiveness) when the other
consumer that tried on the T-shirt was a specific, physically
attractive person. Similar effects occur for friends and wellknown celebrities such as President Barack Obama or the
singer Madonna (Newman, Diesendruck, and Bloom 2011;
Rozin, Millman, and Nemeroff 1996). In addition, Newman
and Bloom (2012) find that laypeople’s estimate of the dollar value of an art piece, particularly if created by a wellknown artist, is positively influenced by the amount of
direct physical contact of the creator with the object during
its production process. In short, these authors believe that a
“person’s immaterial qualities or ‘essence’ can be transferred to an object through physical contact” (Newman,
Diesendruck, and Bloom 2011, p. 216).
Thus, it seems possible that handmade (vs. machinemade) production mode affects product attractiveness
through psychological, symbolic contagion. Although the
literature does not clearly indicate the direction of such a
contagion effect—an unspecified handmade producer may
yield negative contagion, much like an unspecified consumer trying on a T-shirt (Argo, Dahl, and Morales 2006)—
it seems possible that unspecified handmade producers have
a positive contagion effect on the attractiveness of the fruits
of their labor. In summary, we predict that even if the
underlying producer is anonymous and not known to the
consumer (as is often the case with products promoted as
handmade), consumers may infer that the handmade producer makes items with love and may believe that the producer’s love for the production process and/or the product
symbolically imbues the emerging object with love. If
handmade products are indeed endowed with such love,
they should become more attractive for consumers because
they take on a special status, both for themselves and as
gifts to loved ones. Formally, we hypothesize the following:
H1: Presenting a product as handmade (vs. machine-made)
can increase its attractiveness to consumers.
H2: This handmade effect is driven, at least in part, by consumer perceptions of love being symbolically imbued in
the product.
Before we proceed to testing the love explanation for a
potential handmade effect, it is necessary to assess whether
the handmade effect exists in the first place. We do so in
Study 1.
Study 1
In Study 1, we test for the existence of the proposed handmade effect—that is, whether presenting a product as handmade makes that product more attractive to consumers. To
perform this test, we employed two control conditions: one
in which the same product is presented as machine-made
and one in which no production mode is mentioned. The
experiment is a 3 (production mode: handmade vs. machinemade vs. no production cue) ¥ 4 (product replicates: greeting cards, jewelry, scarf, knives) mixed-model design in
which the first factor is manipulated between participants
and the second is manipulated within each participant.
Method
One hundred forty-seven students (Mage = 19 years, 49%
female) based in the Netherlands volunteered to participate
in a product-concept study in exchange for course credit.
Participants were randomly assigned to one of the three
experimental conditions. In all three conditions, participants
were exposed to a color picture of a product along with a
label of the product (e.g., scarf), its price (e.g., 70 euros),
and at least two attributes further describing the product
(e.g., 100% wool, unisex; for more detailed descriptions of
the methodology for all four studies, see the Web Appendix). After seeing the product, participants assessed the
product’s attractiveness on six items using a seven-point
scale that followed the preamble “How do you evaluate this
product?” (“dislike/like,” “bad/good,” “not appealing/
appealing,” “unlikely to buy/likely to buy,” “I would not/I
would be happy to receive [product] as a gift,” “I would not
take/I would take more care of this [product] than of other
[products]”; a = .89). We used the same procedure for the
other three products. The only difference between conditions was the provision of the information about how the
focal products were made; they were described as being
“handmade” or “machine-made,” or no production cue was
provided. After evaluating all four products, we asked participants to complete the Perceived Awareness of the
Research Hypothesis (PARH) scale (Rubin, Paolini, and
The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It? / 101
Crisp 2010). Finally, respondents completed an open-ended
suspicion probe in which they were asked what they
thought the study was about.
Results and Discussion
Preliminary analyses. Because the product attractiveness
scales contained a variety of diverse attitudinal and behavioral intention items, we first ran a confirmatory factor
analysis (CFA) to assess the psychometric properties of the
scale. Importantly, we find that all indicator loadings are
positive and highly significant (ps < .001); moreover, the
model’s fit indices (comparative fit index = .96, normed fit
index = .94, standardized root mean square residual = .05)
and the average variance extracted (AVE = .65) are adequate.
These results support the psychometric quality and the unidimensional operationalization of the product attractiveness
scale. Second, we tested whether a potential handmade
effect depended on the product replicate factor. We conducted a repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA)
with production mode as the between-participants factor
and product replicate as the within-participant factor.
Inspection of the corresponding two-way interaction reveals
a nonsignificant effect (F < 1; for details, see the Web
Appendix). This finding indicates that attitudes across product replicates did not significantly differ as a function of our
manipulation. We therefore aggregated the data across
products and formed an overall product attractiveness
index, which served as our dependent variable.
Main analyses and hypothesis test. We first tested
whether product attractiveness ratings differed between the
two control conditions (machine-made vs. no cue). This test
yielded a nonsignificant effect; product attractiveness
scores were almost identical (Mmachine = 3.39, Mno cue =
3.38; t < 1). This finding is important because it indicates
that the machine-made cue, as one might argue, did not produce a negative effect compared with the baseline condition
(no production cue provided). For our formal hypothesis
test, we therefore collapsed the data across the two control
conditions. In support of H1, we find that respondents
report significantly higher product attractiveness scores in
the handmade versus the control conditions (Mhand = 3.65,
Mcontrol = 3.38; t(145) = 2.41, p < .05). These results provide
initial evidence for the existence of the handmade effect,
namely, that presenting products as handmade can make
those products more attractive to consumers than presenting
those same products as machine-made or not mentioning
the mode of production at all (note that the handmade effect
is also significant if we contrast product attractiveness
scores in the handmade vs. the two control conditions separately: handmade vs. machine-made: t(144) = 1.97, p = .05;
handmade vs. no cue: t(144) = 2.17, p < .05). Finally, our
results do not seem to be driven by experimental demand.
Controlling for hypothesis awareness (as measured by the
PARH scale or by excluding the few participants who
guessed the goal of the study) did not change results, and
the handmade effect did not interact with either measure of
hypothesis awareness.
102 / Journal of Marketing, March 2015
Discussion. In summary, Study 1 provides evidence for
the existence of a handmade (vs. machine-made or no production cue) effect on consumers’ perceived product attractiveness (H1). We also find that results for the condition in
which no production cue was present closely tracked results
in the machine-made condition. Given that machine-made
and no-cue conditions yielded similar evaluations and contrasting handmade with machine-made avoids confounding
the specific production mode with mentioning production
mode per se, we use machine-made production as our control in subsequent studies.
A potential concern with Study 1 is that generalizability
across four replicates might have been boosted artificially
by presenting replicates within-participant. That is, evaluations of one product might be used to generate similar
responses to the next product, creating unnatural consistency across products within a participant. The pattern of
pairwise correlations between replicates within experimental conditions, however, does not support such an explanation: pairwise correlations were low; except for one pair in
the no-cue condition (r = .21, p = .04), none of the pairwise
correlations was significant, even at p < .10. In addition,
different studies in this article use different replicates.
Finally, we replicated the handmade effect in single-product
studies (that space constraints prevent us from reporting in
detail). For example, in a study on tableware that we ran
specifically in response to a reviewer’s concern about generalizability, consumers perceived the same dinner plates as
more attractive if they were described as being handpainted versus machine-painted (Mhand = 4.58, Mmachine =
3.73; t(144) = 4.50, p < .01). Furthermore, this study
revealed that consumers indicated they would be more
likely to buy a hand-painted versus machine-painted plate
at a given retail price ($19) (Mhand = 2.37, Mmachine = 1.85;
t(144) = 2.12, p < .05). In a study involving furniture as a
product category, in which we also experimentally varied
the time needed to produce a wooden table, consumers perceived the same table as more attractive if it was described
as being handmade versus machine-made (Mhand = 5.17,
Mmachine = 4.68; (F1, 175) = 9.70, p < .01). Notably, the
handmade effect was not affected by the duration of the
production process (F < 1). In summary, we believe there is
strong empirical evidence for the existence of the handmade
effect. In the next study, we explore our proposed love
account for the handmade effect documented in Study 1.
Study 2
In Study 2, we test our theory that perceptions of love
enhance the attractiveness of handmade products. We also
examine a potential moderator of the path from perceived
love to product attractiveness. Specifically, we argue that
products that are perceived to be symbolically imbued with
love should be more attractive as gifts in relationships that
tend to be characterized by love than in more distant relationships that are usually not characterized by love. Put differently, the perception that handmade products are symbolically imbued with love might make those products more
attractive as an effective means of conveying love to a gift
recipient. Conversely, conveying love might seem inappropriate in more distant relationships, which makes the love
associated with handmade products an attribute that is less
attractive for such gifting situations. Thus, in Study 2, we
examine the effect of production mode (handmade vs.
machine-made) on the attractiveness of a product as a gift
to recipients varying in closeness (e.g., a family member vs.
an acquaintance). Our focal love account predicts that the
handmade effect is stronger when the giver and recipient
have a closer relationship.
Less importantly, we also explored another, more practical issue in Study 2. If part of the handmade effect is due to
consumers’ perception that the product is made with love,
which is perceived to symbolically imbue the product with
love, can a marketer take a shortcut to leverage this “love
advantage” by directly stating that the product is made with
love in a machine-made condition? Or would any such
obvious mention be ignored (e.g., because it arouses the
consumer’s “schemer schema” and/or because consumers
would dismiss it as mere puffery or “cheap talk”)? Thus, in
Study 2, we cross the production mode and recipient factors
with (not) directly touting the product as being “made with
love.” In addition, we use a nonstudent sample and another
set of product replicates to add generalizability.
Method
Participants and design. Four hundred eighty-seven
members of an Austrian consumer panel were recruited by
an international market research agency (Mage = 38 years,
54% female) and were randomly assigned to conditions in a
2 (production mode: handmade vs. machine-made) ¥ 2
(relationship with recipient of a potential gift: close vs. distant) ¥ 2 (direct love cue: no cue vs. love cue present) ¥ 4
(product replicates: ceramic mugs, soap, leather goods, stationery) experiment. The first three factors were manipulated between participants and the latter within participant.
The Web Appendix provides details of study methodology.
Procedure and stimuli. In the close (distant) relationship
condition, respondents were instructed to consider that they
were in the market for a gift for someone with whom they
have a close (distant) relationship—for example, a relative,
a good friend, significant other (a distant acquaintance—for
example, a colleague at work).2
Furthermore, participants were informed that the products are either handmade or machine-made. Then, consumers
were exposed to the images of the handmade (machinemade) product replicates, one at a time and presented in
random order. Participants either saw the plain product pictures (in the no love cue condition) or the product pictures
accompanied by direct visual love cues placed next to the
product pictures (in the love cue condition; e.g., “made with
2Fifty-three participants failed a reading check that directly followed the relationship manipulation in which they were asked for
whom the potential gift was intended (0 = a close person, 1 = a
distant person) and were thus excluded from further analysis (this
criterion was determined before data collection to reduce noise in
the data).
love,” heart-shaped graphics; stimuli adapted from existing
commercial brochures, ads, or brand labels).
Measures. Purchase intention served as our main dependent variable, and we measured it directly after each product replicate exposure with three items following the preamble: “Would you buy a product of this firm as a gift for
the intended gift recipient?” (“For this occasion, I would
buy this product as a gift,” “It is unlikely that I would buy a
product of this firm as a gift” [reverse-scored], and “I
would feel good about buying a product of this firm as a
gift”; 1 = “strongly disagree” to 7 = “strongly agree”; a =
.84).
After having been exposed to all four firms/products,
participants completed items to measure our process and
control variables using a holistic judgment of all firms/
products combined (all items are measured on seven-point
scales; 1 = “strongly disagree” to 7 = “strongly agree,”
unless otherwise noted). We measured perception of love
symbolically embedded in the product (“contains love”),
our main mediator variable, with three items: “The products
… can figuratively be described as ‘warm’ (‘warmhearted’),
are full of ‘love,’ are full of ‘passion’” (a = .87). To provide
more nuanced evidence for our conjectured process—that
is, to examine whether love in the product (“contains love”)
is a consequence of the love invested by the handmade producer in the production process (“made with love”)—we
also measured the latter love component with two items: “I
think the products are ‘made with love’” and “I think the
products are ‘made with passion’” (a = .94). Importantly,
we measured the “made with love” items after the “contains
love” items to avoid the threat of self-generated validity
(i.e., that answers of the more obvious “made with love”
construct “lead” respondents in their answers of the less
obvious “contains love” construct). We also measured several other factors potentially underlying the handmade
effect, as identified in the free association pilot study
(uniqueness, quality, effort, and expensiveness), as well as a
manipulation check of the relationship closeness factor (for
measures, see the Web Appendix).
Results and Discussion
Preliminary analyses. We first performed a series of
CFAs to establish discriminant validity between all pairs of
constructs. First, a series of chi-square difference tests
demonstrates that two-factor models fit the data significantly better than single-factor models (ps < .001). Second,
Fornell–Larcker tests reveal that the AVEs exceed the
shared variances among all pairs of constructs, which further supports discriminant validity.
Before collapsing data across product replicates, we
performed a 2 (production mode) ¥ 2 (relationship closeness) ¥ 2 (love cue) ¥ 4 (product replicate) mixed model
ANOVA on purchase intention. We find that none of the
relevant effects interact with product replicate (all Fs < 1;
for details, see the Web Appendix). Thus, we collapsed the
data across replicates for further analyses.
Manipulation check. A 2 ¥ 2 ANOVA of the relationship
closeness index produced, as intended, a main effect of the
The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It? / 103
relationship factor (F(1, 426) = 1,915.29, p < .001; Mclose =
.91, Mdistant = –.87). All other effects proved insignificant
(ps > .22).
Product attractiveness. A three-way ANOVA on purchase intention produces a significant main effect of the
production mode factor (F(1, 426) = 9.48, p < .01) such that
respondents generally show a significantly stronger intention to buy handmade (vs. machine-made) products as gifts
(Mhand = 4.11, Mmachine = 3.81). Thus, the findings replicate
the positive handmade effect observed in Study 1. Consistent
with our focal prediction in Study 2, however, this main effect
is qualified by a production mode ¥ gift recipient interaction (F(1, 426) = 14.54, p < .001). Contrasting the handmade
effect by gift recipient, we observe the positive handmade
effect in the gift-giving condition for close others (Mhand =
4.32, Mmachine = 3.61; F(1, 426) = 23.22, p < .001) but not in
the gift-giving condition for distant others (Mhand = 3.92,
Mmachine = 3.99; F < 1; see Figure 1). The remaining main
and interaction effects proved insignificant (Fs < 1). Of particular interest is the insignificance of effects involving the
direct love cue (main effect: F < 1, interaction with production mode, F(1, 426) = 1.02, p = .31; three-way interaction
between production mode, relationship closeness, and the
direct love cue, F < 1). Thus, in our data, merely telling
consumers that a product is made with love is not an effective shortcut for machine-made products. It also does not
boost or diminish the attractiveness of handmade products.
Love. A three-way ANOVA on love reveals that respondents perceive handmade products to symbolically contain
significantly more love than machine-made products (Mhand =
4.23, Mmachine = 3.14; F(1, 426) = 65.01, p < .001). We also
observe that the presence of the direct love cue slightly
boosted consumer perceptions of love associated with the
products (Mcue = 3.85, Mno cue = 3.52; F(1, 426) = 5.79, p <
.05). The other effects, including the three-way interaction,
the production mode ¥ direct love cue interaction, and the
production mode ¥ relationship closeness interaction were
not statistically significant (all ps > .23). Note that the
FIGURE 1
Mean Purchase Intention for Handmade Versus
Machine-Made Gifts as a Function of the
Relationship to the Gift Recipient (Study 2)
5.0
Purchase Intention (1–7)
4.5
4.0
3.5
4.32
3.61
3.92
Handmade
Machine-made
3.99
3.0
2.5
2.0
Close
Distant
Relationship Closeness
104 / Journal of Marketing, March 2015
absence of a production mode ¥ relationship closeness
interaction on love is as expected because we hypothesized
that relationship closeness would moderate the path from
love to product attractiveness, not the path from production
mode to love. Handmade production is perceived to symbolically imbue a product with love regardless of the recipient who will later receive the product; however, the love is
less valued when the relationship between the giver and the
recipient is more distant.
Alternative process variables. Consistent with the
insights from the qualitative exploration of the handmade
effect, we also find main effects of the production mode on
all other process and control variables. Handmade products
are generally associated with more uniqueness (Mhand =
4.63, Mmachine = 2.75; F(1, 426) = 140.85, p < .001) and higher
quality (Mhand = 5.59, Mmachine = 4.77; F(1, 426) = 44.87, p <
.001). They are also perceived to be more expensive (Mhand =
4.80, Mmachine = 3.67; F(1, 426) = 77.55, p < .001) and more
effortful to produce (Mhand = 4.79, Mmachine = 3.21; F(1, 426) =
150.59, p < .001). To account for these variables, we added
them as controls in the subsequent mediation analysis (note
that multicollinearity was not a concern in this study).
Moderated mediation. We predicted that the handmade
effect on the attractiveness of products for gifting occasions
would be stronger in the case of a close (vs. distant) gift
recipient because the love embodied in handmade products
is appreciated more when giving to close than to distant
others. That is, we expect a pattern of moderated mediation
in which production mode has a main effect on “contains
love” and in which “contains love” interacts with gift recipient to affect product attractiveness. As expected, a bootstrapping analysis (Hayes 2013) including uniqueness,
quality, expensiveness, and production effort as covariates
reveals that the indirect effect of the production mode on
purchase intent through “contains love” is significantly
stronger (95% confidence interval [CI95%]: –.54, –.19) in
the close than in the distant gift recipient condition (close:
CI95%: –.66, –.32; distant: CI95%: –.27, –.01). Thus, we find
evidence, even when controlling for alternative processes,
that the handmade effect is significantly mediated by perceptions of love in the product and that love in the product
is significantly more positively related with purchase intention in the close (vs. distant) recipient condition.
Sequential mediation. Because this article’s core contribution, in addition to documenting the handmade effect, is
to show that this effect is at least partially due to handmade
products becoming imbued with love, we concentrate on
showing mediation by “contains love.” However, our
theory specifically argues that this perceived love in the
product is the result of a handmade producer’s love for the
production process. Therefore, we also ran a sequential
mediation analysis in the close recipient condition (in
which the handmade effect was present, as expected). This
analysis showed a significant sequential indirect effect from
production mode to “made with love” to “contains love” to
purchase intent (CI95%: –.53, –.18), which supports the
overarching love account underlying the handmade effect.
Discussion. The results in Study 2 provide evidence for
our theorizing about the role of love underlying the handmade effect. Consumers indeed associate handmade products more strongly with love symbolically imbued in the
product. This love, in turn, helps explain why consumers
prefer handmade over machine-made products as gifts.
Importantly, we were also able to moderate the love–product
attractiveness link: specifically, our results show that handmade products’ being symbolically invested with love makes
them more attractive as gifts for relationally close (vs. distant)
recipients. Anecdotally, this finding seems consistent with our
constatation that the frequency of Internet searches for handmade products increases strongly around the holidays when
consumers presumably search especially for gifts for their
loved ones (using Google Trends over the 2004–2011 period).
Study 3
In Study 2, we assumed that handmade products are particularly attractive as gifts to close recipients because gift givers
would be more motivated to convey love to close recipients
(relative to more distant recipients). Although expressing love
is a common motivation for buying gifts for close others
(Belk and Coon 1993), we did not assess this motivation
directly. Therefore, Study 3 provides further evidence for the
proposed love account by manipulating the motivation to convey love directly. In other words, we test whether handmade
products become more attractive if the gift-giving goal is to
use the product to convey one’s love to the recipient. Such a
pattern of results would further validate our love account.
Method
Participants, design, procedure, and stimuli. Four hundred two consumers (Mage = 31 years, 38% female)
recruited from a U.S. online consumer panel participated in
a study on wine glasses; participants were exposed to visual
stimuli depicting two wine glasses, one from the Spiegelau
brand and one from the Riedel brand. The focal question
was which of the two types of wine glasses participants
would choose as a gift for one of their close ones (i.e., a
close family member). We manipulated which of the two
brands of glasses was handmade and which was machinemade. We also manipulated the focal gift-giving goal between
participants. Participants were asked which of the two types
of glasses they would choose if their goal was to convey
their love to the gift recipient versus to give the best possible glasses for drinking wine. This manipulation enables us
to test whether handmade products become more attractive
if the goal motivating the gift giving is to convey love. Such
a finding would provide converging evidence for our focal
love account: if conveying love is key, handmade products
become more attractive (because they “contain” love).
Thus, participants were randomly assigned to conditions in
a 2 (production mode: Riedel machine-made, Spiegelau
handmade vs. Riedel handmade, Spiegelau machine-made) ¥
2 (gift-giving goal: love vs. performance) experiment.
Measures. Preference for a set of six wine glasses of
one brand (Spiegelau) or the other (Riedel) served as our
main dependent variable, and we measured it directly after
product exposure. We employed three measures, captured
on six-point scales: (1) “I would definitely prefer to buy the
[production mode] glasses from Spiegelau/Riedel,” (2) “I
would choose the glasses from Spiegelau/Riedel,” and (3)
“I would purchase the Spiegelau glasses/Riedel glasses” (1 =
“Spiegelau,” and 6 = “Riedel”; a = .99). After the product
preference scales, we captured perceptions of love in the
product (i.e., “contains love”) with three items: (1) “The
production process imbued the products with a lot of love,”
(2) “The products contain love,” and (3) “I think the products are full of love” (1 = “more true for [production mode]
Spiegelau glasses,” 6 = “more true for [other production
mode] Riedel glasses”; a = .97). The Web Appendix provides additional details of study methodology.
Results and Discussion
Preliminary analyses. We performed a series of CFAs to
test whether product preference is empirically distinct from
love. First, a chi-square difference test demonstrates that a
two-factor model is superior to and significantly better than a
single-factor model (p < .001). Second, a Fornell–Larcker test
reveals that the AVE exceeds the shared variance between
the two constructs, which supports discriminant validity.
Product attractiveness. A 2 (production mode: Riedel
machine-made, Spiegelau handmade vs. Riedel handmade,
Spiegelau machine-made) ¥ 2 (gift-giving goal: love vs.
performance) ANOVA on product preference first reveals a
main effect of the production mode, which replicates the
positive handmade effect documented in the prior studies:
when the Riedel glass was portrayed as handmade, respondents demonstrated a significantly stronger preference for the
Riedel glass compared with when it was portrayed as being
machine-made (Mhand = 4.85, Mmachine = 2.20; F(1, 398) =
366.62, p < .001). Second, the main effect of the gift-giving
goal factor was insignificant (F < 1). Third, and in support
of our love account, we find a significant interaction (F(1,
398) = 24.11, p < .001). Although the handmade effect is positive and significant in both scenarios, it is significantly more
pronounced in the love (vs. performance) condition—that
is, if the goal of giving the wine glasses was to convey love
(Mhand = 5.15, Mmachine = 2.02; F(1, 398) = 257.35, p < .001)
versus to give the best possible glasses for drinking wine
(Mhand = 4.53, Mmachine = 2.38; F(1, 398) = 121.51, p < .001).
Love. As we expected, a 2 ¥ 2 ANOVA on love only
reveals a main effect of the production mode factor.
Respondents perceive the Riedel glass to contain more love
when portrayed as handmade (Mhand = 4.85) versus
machine-made (Mmachine = 1.98; F(1, 398) = 903.29, p < .001;
other Fs < 1).
Moderated mediation. We specified the same type of
moderated mediation model as in Study 2, replacing gift
recipient by gift-giving goal. As we expected, we find that
the indirect effect (production mode—contains love—preference) is significantly stronger (CI95%: .25, .1.00) if conveying love as opposed to maximizing performance is the
primary gift-giving goal (love: CI95%: –2.97, –2.14; performance: CI95%: –2.33, –1.48).
The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It? / 105
Discussion. In Study 3, we replicated the handmade
effect in a side-by-side preference setting and provided
additional process evidence through moderation and mediation. Specifically, we argue that because handmade products are believed to contain love, they are particularly well
suited to convey love. We find support for this argument in
that preference for handmade products was stronger when
the gift-giving goal was to convey love (vs. giving the bestperforming product). Moderated mediation results further
corroborated this process account.
Study 4
The studies reported thus far measure the handmade effect
using a variety of attitudinal and behavioral intention measures. However, these measures, while informative, did not
involve consequential decisions and did not involve a dollar
metric. That is, we did not show that participants were actually willing to pay a significantly higher amount of money
for handmade versus machine-made products. Therefore,
drawing on a sample of U.S. consumers, Study 4 employs
an incentive-compatible willingness-to-pay (WTP) measure. In addition, anonymous reviewers graciously suggested additional alternative processes for which we did not
control in the prior studies. In particular, one might argue
that handmade products are considered more authentic or
that handmade production arouses other positive emotions,
such as pride, happiness, or contentment. Although we
believe that the handmade effect, like virtually any other
managerially relevant phenomenon, is probably driven by
multiple processes, we argue that perceptions of love symbolically imbued in handmade products can be a significant
driver of the handmade effect, even if controlling for these
alternative accounts. Therefore, in Study 4, we assess “contains love” as a mediator of the handmade effect while controlling for these other positive emotions.
Method
Participants, design, procedure, and stimuli. Three hundred two consumers (Mage = 35 years, 53% female)
recruited from a U.S. online consumer panel participated in
a study run just before Mother’s Day (May 11 in this case).
Participants were informed they could win a bar of Le
Sérail brand French milled soap for their mother. Embedded
in other product information, we manipulated the production mode (handmade vs. machine-made) between participants. After product exposure, participants completed a
short questionnaire containing an incentive-compatible
measure of WTP and a set of items capturing love, happiness, pride, contentment, and product authenticity.3
Measures. Willingness to pay for a bar of Le Sérail soap
was our main dependent variable; we measured it on a slid3We
deleted 39 participants from the initial sample because they
indicated that their mother was not alive anymore, annulling the
incentive compatibility of the task (the opportunity to win a gift
for one’s mother is not meaningful for these participants). Thus,
the final sample consisted of 263 participants (Mage = 34 years,
51% female).
106 / Journal of Marketing, March 2015
ing scale (US$0–US$15) directly after product exposure
using a version of the incentive-compatible BDM lottery
(Becker, DeGroot, and Marschak 1964), which has been
demonstrated to be a reliable and valid elicitation method of
consumers’ WTP (Wertenbroch and Skiera 2002) and has
been used widely in marketing (e.g., Franke, Schreier, and
Kaiser 2010; Fuchs, Prandelli, and Schreier 2010; Mochon,
Norton, and Ariely 2012; Norton, Mochon, and Ariely
2012; Nunes and Boatwright 2004). In the traditional BDM
lottery, respondents are asked to indicate the maximum
price they are willing to pay for a product. Researchers then
randomly draw a price from, for example, an urn containing
all prices within a realistic range. If the respondent’s stated
maximum price is higher than the randomly drawn price,
the respondent pays the randomly drawn price and receives
the product. If the respondent’s stated maximum price is
lower than the randomly drawn price, the respondent does
not pay and does not receive the product. This procedure
can be formally shown to incentivize the respondent to indicate his or her unbiased, true WTP (Becker, DeGroot, and
Marschak 1964; Wertenbroch and Skiera 2002). To reduce
cost and allow implementation using an online panel while
avoiding payment collection issues, we added another lottery (for a previous example of adding another lottery, see
Schreier, Fuchs, and Dahl 2012). Participants were truthfully told that they would enter a lottery for a prize of $15
and that winners of the $15 would enter the standard BDM
procedure, receiving the $15 but no product if their stated
maximum price was lower than the randomly drawn price
and receiving the product plus what was left of the $15 after
paying the randomly drawn price if their stated maximum
price was above the randomly drawn price. Nonwinners of
the $15 prize did not receive or pay money and did not
receive the product. As Ding (2007) demonstrates, superimposing the additional lottery does not change participants’
incentive to state their true, unbiased WTP.
We measured love with three items (1 = “strongly disagree” to 7 = “strongly agree”): “I think the production
process imbued the product with a lot of love,” “The product
contains love,” and “I think the product is full of love” (a =
.94). The Web Appendix provides additional details of study
methodology, including measures for the alternative accounts.
Results and Discussion
Preliminary analyses. A series of CFAs first indicated that
love is empirically distinct from the rival explanations (chisquare difference tests: ps < .001; in addition, the Fornell–
Larcker criterion suggested discriminant validity). To avoid
multicollinearity among the alternative accounts in the
mediation analyses reported subsequently, we used each
construct separately to establish the relative power of love
in mediating a potential handmade effect on WTP.
WTP. An ANOVA on WTP replicates the handmade
effect based on a behavioral, incentive-compatible outcome
variable. If the soap was described as handmade, respondents indicate a significantly higher WTP than when it was
described as machine-made (Mhand = US$6.56, Mmachine =
US$5.63; F(1, 261) = 4.53, p < .05).
Mediation by love. To again test for love as a mediator,
we specified a model with the production mode as the independent variable, love as the mediating variable, and WTP
as the dependent variable. We ran four mediation models in
which we added happiness, pride, contentment, and authenticity as covariates, one at a time to avoid multicollinearity.
In all four models, we find that love is significantly related
to WTP, which supports mediation (i.e., none of the confidence intervals contained zero). It is noteworthy that alternative models in which the rival process variables were
specified as mediator variables and love as the covariate
produced hardly any significant mediation effects. These
effects are also consistent when we ran an additional model
in which we added a compound index of all alternative
process measures (a = .93) as a rival mediator. Thus, the
findings indicate that love mediates the handmade effect
independent of and beyond any effects stemming from
more general positive emotions (e.g., happiness, pride, contentment) as well as perceptions of product authenticity.4
Discussion. In Study 4, we find that participants in an
incentive-compatible experiment are willing to pay more for
the same bar of French milled soap when it is promoted as
handmade than when it is promoted as machine-made. The
effect appears to be substantial: marketing the same soap
bar as handmade increases consumers’ WTP, on average, by
17%. Importantly, in this study, we also find mediation of
the handmade effect by perceived love symbolically imbued
in the product (“contains love”) when we control for the
rival accounts authenticity, pride, happiness, or contentment.
General Discussion
Across four studies, we document the existence of a positive handmade effect on product attractiveness and find that
this effect is, to an important extent, explained by love. That
is, in Study 1, we find that participants evaluate products
marketed as handmade more positively than either products
described as machine-made or products that do not mention
any mode of production. In Study 2, we moderate the handmade effect by manipulating the relationship between giver
and recipient of a potential gift. Specifically, we find that
handmade products are no longer more attractive than
machine-made products when the products are evaluated as
gifts for socially more distant (vs. close) recipients. Products perceived as “containing love” do not convey as much
of an advantage for products that are to serve as gifts for
distant recipients as for products that are to serve as gifts for
close recipients. In Study 3, we tap into the process more
directly. We show that when the goal of a gift is to convey
love, gift givers show a stronger preference for a handmade
(vs. machine-made) product than when the gift giver’s goal
4Mediation models: love (mediator) controlled for happiness:
CI95%: .008, .40; love controlled for pride: .05, .35; love controlled
for contentment: .06, .42; love controlled for authenticity: .07, .35;
love controlled for compound index of alternative accounts: .001,
.38; alternative mediation models controlled for love: happiness
(mediator): –.08, .23, pride: –.07, 19, contentment: –.08, 11,
authenticity: .001, .17; compound index: –.46, .28.
is to give the best-performing product. Finally, in Study 4,
we provide evidence for the managerial significance of the
handmade effect by using an incentive-compatible measure
of WTP. We find that participants are willing to pay 17%
more for a bar of French soap when the soap is presented as
handmade (vs. machine-made).
Theoretical and Practical Implications
In addition to demonstrating the existence of a positive
handmade effect on product attractiveness (in a way that
controls common confounds by experimentally manipulating stated production mode), the present studies uncover the
mediating role of perceptions of the love with which handmade products are produced and with which handmade
products are perceived to be symbolically imbued.
Although our primary goal was to contribute to the understanding of the influence of stated production mode (handmade vs. machine-made) on product attractiveness, our
results also speak to the literature on psychological contagion. The studies herein suggest that a specific emotion of
the product’s creator (love) can symbolically transfer to the
product and affect the attractiveness of that product to consumers. Moreover, our findings suggest that positive contagion effects are not only elicited by physical contact with a
specific producer (e.g., a well-known celebrity; Newman,
Diesendruck, and Bloom 2011) but can also be elicited by
physical contact with an unspecific, anonymous producer.
This finding is of interest because physical contact by an
unspecific other (i.e., another consumer) has previously
been shown to produce negative contagion effects (Argo,
Dahl, and Morales 2006). Finally, our research contributes
by documenting the role of a process variable underlying a
positive contagion effect directly, through measurement and
mediation, supplementing evidence provided through the
more common moderation approach.
In addition to our findings’ theoretical significance, they
have clear practical implications. Our results suggest that
producing a product by hand, or rather marketing it as such,
can be an effective way to make a product more attractive
to consumers, of course with several caveats about target
population and the type of handmade production involved
(see the section “Limitations and Further Research”). In this
regard, the incentive-compatible Study 4 is particularly
informative. We find that in our U.S. sample, consumers
were, on average, willing to pay 17% more for a bar of soap
that was portrayed as handmade versus machine-made. This
is a substantial difference, but a more fine-grained analysis
suggests that the handmade effect may be even larger for
the segment of customers most likely to be in the market for
the focal product. We plotted the downward-sloping
demand curves for the handmade and machine-made conditions of Study 4 (see Figure 2) and found that the handmade
effect appears to be particularly pronounced at higher rather
than lower levels of WTP within their production mode
condition (i.e., for respondents who are especially interested in getting the focal product). For example, the handmade effect yields an increase in WTP of 25% when comparing those at the 95th percentile of WTP in the handmade
condition with those at the 95th percentile in the machine-
The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It? / 107
FIGURE 2
Consumer Demand (WTP) for a Handmade Versus
Machine-Made Bar of Soap (Study 4)
16
Handmade
Machine-made
14
12
WTP (in US $)
10
8
6
4
2
0
1
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130
n (Customers)
made condition. This pattern is formally confirmed by a
series of quantile regressions that compare WTP for participants in the handmade versus machine-made condition at
the same percentile of WTP within their condition. For
example, while the handmade effect is of medium strength
at the 5th percentile (b5% = .5, p < .10) and the median
(b50% = .5, p < .05), it is much stronger at the 95th percentile (b95% = 1.5, p < .01). Thus, marketing products as
handmade seems particularly relevant for the left-hand side
of the demand curve—that is, for consumers who are generally willing to pay higher amounts for the focal product.
In addition to the handmade effect per se, the love
process underlying that effect should have direct managerial
implications too. Marketing products as handmade appears
to be particularly promising when love is a central buying
motive—for example, when consumers are searching for
gifts (1) for close others to whom (2) they want to convey
their love. Thus, marketing products as handmade might be
particularly promising during the Christmas season or
around Mother’s Day or Valentine’s Day, for example.
Reminding potential customers that handmade products
might be the right way to convey their feelings to their loved
ones is a promising communication strategy toward that end.
Marketers might also stress the love in the handmade
production process in their advertising by, for example, providing vivid pictures and rich descriptions of the production
process. The Austrian ceramic tableware brand Gmundner,
for example, presents detailed information about its products’ production process, including pictures of the artisans
producing the tableware with joy, passion, and love (e.g.,
“Apart from artistic talent, this profession requires … a lot
of love and care. One can sense this in the end product”).
The results in Study 2, however, suggest that highlighting
the love in handmade production should be done subtly so
that it does not activate the consumer’s schemer schema. In
108 / Journal of Marketing, March 2015
Study 2, we find that direct statements and love cues did not
have a noticeable effect. The findings also indicate that
marketers of machine-made products cannot take a simple
shortcut to love by merely saying their products are “made
with love” (Study 2).
Limitations and Further Research
Because this research is, to the best of our knowledge, the
first series of experiments on the handmade effect, we view
our work as merely a first step toward understanding the
impact of marketing a product as handmade. Some caveats
apply, and many questions remain for further research.
First, most of our studies involved comparing handmade
products with products explicitly presented as machinemade. At first sight, one might argue that this comparison
reduces the external validity of our results because more
companies present their products without mentioning production mode than as machine-made. We chose to contrast
the handmade with the machine-made production mode in
most of the studies to safeguard internal validity. This is
because contrasting the handmade production mode with
not mentioning the production mode confounds the specific
mode of production (i.e., by hand or by machine) with the
salience of production process per se. In addition, we
included a no-cue control condition in the first experiment
(Study 1). We found that machine-made results were similar
to the no-cue condition, possibly because, as the open association pilot study suggests, consumers naturally contrast
handmade production with machine-made production. For
all these reasons, we chose to use machine-made as our
control condition and omit the no-cue control in the
process-oriented studies that followed. Finally, it is noteworthy that marketing products as machine-made is not
without precedent. For example, in the 1980s, Italian carmaker Fiat touted its Fully Integrated Robotized Engine
(FIRE). More recently, the upscale wine glass manufacturer
Riedel has actively promoted some of its wine glasses as
handmade but touts other wine glasses to be fully
“machine-blown.” Similarly, the cigar manufacturer Mom’s
prominently sells its cigars as “machine-made.”5
Second, as with most phenomena of practical importance, the handmade effect is almost certain to be driven by
multiple processes. That is, several processes contribute to
the effect. For example, in Study 4, we find significant
mediation of the handmade effect by authenticity (in addition to the much stronger mediation by love). Our experiments were designed to isolate the love driver from many,
in our view more obvious, potential drivers such as uniqueness or quality. We chose to focus on imbued love for our
initial empirical exploration of the handmade effect because
the love contagion process is less straightforward and intuitive than some of the other potential mediators. In addition,
we believe that the love process is likely to be more specific
to handmade production, as many machine-made products
are also authentic and machines can increasingly turn out
5As one reviewer speculated, the handmade effect might even
reverse in developing countries (i.e., machine-made might be
viewed as a positive attribute).
high-quality products or can even be programmed to customize products to the extent of being unique (e.g., using
3-D printing). That is, perceptions of handmade products
being made with love may prove more stable over time (and
across situations) than perceptions of handmade products
being unique or of higher quality. In summary, our goal in
this initial research was to text for the existence of a positive handmade effect and to explore the role of love imbued in
the product as one of the drivers of the effect. We focused on
perceptions of symbolically imbued love but fully recognize
that the handmade effect is driven by multiple processes.
Third, alternative explanations might exist for specific
results in this article. For example, as one reviewer indicated, it could be argued that the results in Study 2 are due
to handmade products being more difficult to find and
therefore suggest greater effort on the part of the gift giver
(instead of the producer), which might be particularly valuable when giving to a close (vs. distant) recipient. It is
unclear, however, how this alternative explanation accounts
for the mediated moderation results. In addition, we would
expect that effort on the part of a gift giver would always be
a good thing, thereby yielding a (potentially smaller, but
substantial) positive handmade effect in the distant-recipient
condition, which we do not find. Nevertheless, we recommend this and other potential alternative explanations for
inclusion in further research.
Fourth, documenting the existence of the handmade
effect does not imply that we believe the effect is universal.
We find a positive handmade effect with three distinct samples of consumers in three countries (Austria, the Netherlands, and the United States), but our results in Study 2
show that the handmade effect is not omnipresent. We find
no significant handmade effect when products are bought
for an emotionally more distant gift recipient. The results in
Studies 2 and 3 show that the handmade effect can be moderated by factors that reduce the value of conveying love
(i.e., by factors that affect the link between love and product
attractiveness, by changing gift recipient in Study 2, and by
changing the gift-giving goal in Study 3).
The handmade effect should also be moderated by factors that reduce the extent to which handmade production is
perceived to imbue the product with love (i.e., by factors
that affect the link between the handmade production mode
and love). Whereas for our Western samples, the handmade
label may be a cue to love by default, additional information may change this inference. For example, consumers in
developing economies or poorer customers in Western
societies may not associate handmade products with love at
all (and may instead associate manual production with
alienation, oppression, hardship, and low quality). We
expect the handmade effect to be stronger for well-to-do,
Subaru-driving, organic-granola-eating academics in scenic
college towns than for hardscrabble day laborers in the
developing world. Even for well-to-do Western consumers,
we expect that different countries of origin may entail different inferences about love. Handmade shoes from low-wage,
emerging economies with little regard for the well-being of
manual laborers should be less likely to engender perceptions of love than handmade shoes from Saskatchewan,
Sweden, or Spain; indeed, interviews we conducted with
managers of apparel stores resonate well with this conjecture. Thus, we believe that handmade production in some
situations may do more to remind consumers of the alienating work processes all too familiar from stories about the
industrial revolution or from news items about sweatshops
from Bangladesh to Manhattan than to conjure up images of
artisanal love. Consistent with this reasoning, a further
study (not reported here due to space constraints) involving
the manufacturing of Spanish guitars shows that the handmade effect is contingent on the perceived working motivation of handmade producers (intrinsic vs. extrinsic motivation); specifically, we found no significant handmade
advantage (vs. a condition in which we provided no production cue) when handmade producers were primarily motivated by economic incentives. However, we did find a
strong handmade effect when handmade producers were
primarily motivated by intrinsic motives (e.g., when artisans were portrayed as enjoying building guitars).
Accordingly, it is likely that the handmade effect may
be attenuated in contexts in which handmade production is
industrialized and takes on a mass-production format; mass
production may sever the perceptions that artisans are
intrinsically motivated to craft the product and, consequently, that handmade products are made with love. Similarly, we believe that the strength of the handmade effect
depends on the specific meanings consumers assign to certain product categories. It is possible that the perceptual
value of handmade products due to our proposed love
account may be reduced in the case of purely utilitarian
products. This is because love may not play a role for products that are purely utilitarian, such as do-it-yourself tools or
office equipment. However, it is not unlikely that do-ityourself enthusiasts assign symbolic meaning to these
arguably utilitarian products. In this case, we would expect
handmade production to lead to a perceptual advantage
through symbolically imbued love.
Moreover, the handmade effect should be moderated by
factors that affect the attractiveness of handmade products
through mediators other than imbued love. For example,
handmade production by large corporations may not only
reduce perceptions of love but also lack the perceived
authenticity and trustworthiness common to smaller producers and their products.
Finally, participants in our experiments were not
exposed and introduced to the specific people that handcrafted the products; it seems plausible that familiarizing
consumers with the producer might further strengthen the
handmade effect. Thus, if consumers are made familiar with
the artisan—for example, through an advertisement displaying the artisan (at work, as done, for example, by the
fashion brand Vans)—they might be able to better envision
the love put into the product, which in turn might increase
perceived product attractiveness.
Conclusion
In light of rapid technological advancements in information
technology and manufacturing, which are increasing the
prevalence of a fully machine-made production mode at an
The Handmade Effect: What’s Love Got to Do with It? / 109
unprecedented pace (Brynjolfsson and McAfee 2011), this
research suggests that human, hand-based labor will not
disappear (and will continue to play an important role in the
labor market). Our results show that consumers have a special appreciation for the human factor in production; handmade products are perceived to be made with love by the
craftsperson and even to contain love, and this perception is
a significant contributor to the positive handmade effect on
product attractiveness. Put differently, efficiency and cost
REFERENCES
Argo, Jennifer J., Darren W. Dahl, and Andrea C. Morales (2006),
“Consumer Contamination: How Consumers React to Products
Touched by Others,” Journal of Marketing, 70 (April), 81–94.
———, ———, and ——— (2008), “Positive Consumer Contagion:
Responses to Attractive Others in a Retail Context,” Journal of
Marketing Research, 45 (December), 690–701.
Barber, Elizabeth W. (2013), “Etsy’s Industrial Revolution,” The
New York Times, (November 12), (accessed January 20, 2015),
[available at http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/12/opinion/etsysindustrial-revolution.html?_r=0].
Baum, Robert J. and Edwin A. Locke (2004), “The Relationship of
Entrepreneurial Traits, Skill, and Motivation to Subsequent
Venture Growth,” Journal of Applied Psychology, 89 (4), 587–
98.
Becker, Gordon M., Morris H. DeGroot, and Jacob Marschak
(1964), “Measuring Utility by a Single-Response Sequential
Method,” Behavioral Science, 9 (3), 226–32.
Belk, Russell W. and Gregory S. Coon (1993), “Gift Giving as
Agapic Love: An Alternative to the Exchange Paradigm Based
on Dating Experiences,” Journal of Consumer Research, 20
(3), 393–417.
Boatwright, Peter and J. Cagan (2010), Built to Love: Creating
Products That Captivate Customers. San Francisco: BerrettKoehler Publishers.
Brynjolfsson, Erik and Andrew McAfee (2011), Race Against the
Machine. Lexington, KY: Digital Frontier Press.
Carroll, Barbara A. and Aaron Ahuvia (2006), “Some Antecedents
and Outcomes of Brand Love,” Marketing Letters, 17 (2), 79–
89.
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly and Eugene Rochberg-Halton (1981),
The Meaning of Things: Domestic Symbols and the Self. New
York: Cambridge University Press.
Ding, Min (2007), “An Incentive-Aligned Mechanism for Conjoint Analysis,” Journal of Marketing Research, 44 (May),
214–23.
Franke, Nikolaus, Martin Schreier, and Ulrike Kaiser (2010), “The
‘I Designed It Myself’ Effect in Mass Customization,” Management Science, 56 (1), 125–40.
Fuchs, Christoph, Emanuella Prandelli, and Martin Schreier
(2010), “The Psychological Effects of Empowerment Strategies on Consumers’ Product Demand,” Journal of Marketing,
74 (January), 65–79.
Hayes, Andrew F. (2013), Introduction to Mediation, Moderation,
and Conditional Process Analysis: A Regression-Based
Approach. New York: Guildford Press.
Kruger, Justin, Derrick Wirtz, Leaf Van Boven, and T. William
Altermatt (2004), “The Effort Heuristic,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40 (1), 91–98.
Liebl, Maureen and Tirhankar Roy (2003), “Preliminary Analysis
of Crafts Producers and Crafts Production,” Economic and
Political Weekly, 38 (51/52), 5366–76.
110 / Journal of Marketing, March 2015
gains proposed by classical economists dating back to
Adam Smith and industrialists such as Henry Ford do not
necessarily outweigh the value of the human factor in production; in contrast to humans, machines just do not produce love, or as reflected by the slogan of the Italian car
manufacturer Alfa Romeo, “senza cuore saremmo solo
macchine.”6
6“Without
heart we’re nothing but machines.”
Locke, Edwin E. (2000), The Prime Movers. New York: Amacom.
Markoff, John (2012), “Skilled Work, Without the Worker,” The
New York Times, (August 18), (accessed January 20, 2015),
[available at http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/19/business/
new-wave-of-adept-robots-is-changing-global-industry.
html?pagewanted=all].
Marx, Karl ([1844] 2007), Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. Mineola, NY: Dover.
Mochon, Daniel, Michael I. Norton, and Dan Ariely (2012), “Bolstering and Restoring Feelings of Competence via the IKEA
Effect,” International Journal of Research in Marketing, 29
(4), 363–69.
Newman, George E. and Paul Bloom (2012), “Art and Authenticity: The Importance of Originals in Judgments of Value,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 141 (3), 558–69.
———, Gil Diesendruck, and Paul Bloom (2011), “Celebrity Contagion and the Value of Objects,” Journal of Consumer
Research, 38 (August), 215–28.
Norton, Michael I., Daniel Mochon, and Dan Ariely (2012), “The
IKEA Effect: When Labor Leads to Love,” Journal of Consumer Psychology, 22 (3), 453–60.
Nunes, Joseph C. and Peter Boatwright (2004), “Incidental Prices
and Their Effect on Willingness to Pay,” Journal of Marketing
Research, 41 (November), 457–66.
Rozin, Paul, Linda Millman, and Carol Nemeroff (1996), “Operations of the Law of Sympathetic Magic in Disgust and Other
Domains,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50
(4), 703–712.
——— and Carol Nemeroff (2002), “Sympathetic Magical Thinking: The Contagion and Similarity Heuristics,” in Heuristics
and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment, Thomas
Gilovich, Dale Griffin, and Daniel Kahneman, eds. Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 201–216.
Rubin, Mark, Stefania Paolini, and Richard J. Crisp (2010), “A
Processing Fluency Explanation of Bias Against Migrants,”
Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46 (1), 21–28.
Schreier, Martin, Christoph Fuchs, and Darren W. Dahl (2012),
“The Innovation Effect of User Design: Exploring Consumers’
Innovation Perceptions of Firms Selling Products Designed by
Users,” Journal of Marketing, 76 (September), 18–32.
Smith, Adam ([1776] 2003), “Division of Labor,” in Theories of
Social Order: A Reader, M. Hechter and C. Horne, eds. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
Sweldens, Steven, Stijn M. J. van Osselaer, and Chris Janiszewski
(2010), “Evaluative Conditioning Procedures and the
Resilience of Conditioned Brand Attitudes,” Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (3), 473–89.
Toffler, Alvin (1980), The Third Wave. New York: Bantam Books.
Wertenbroch, Klaus and Bernd Skiera (2002), “Measuring Consumers’ Willingness to Pay at the Point of Purchase,” Journal
of Marketing Research, 39 (April), 228–41.
Copyright of Journal of Marketing is the property of American Marketing Association and its
content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the
copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email
articles for individual use.
- in 4 pages provide a brief summary of this article.
- Your summary should cover the key elements of the article including: the
study’s
objectives,
importance,
contribution,
recommendations.
- Use time new roman , size 12 , single space
You must cover this points :
Stated Purpose of Article
State purpose of article is described accurately, and
importance of the topic is explored
Methodology
The research methodology is clearly defined
Research Findings
Shows an analysis and synthesis of results
Review of Article
Major points selected and discussed
Clarity of explanations
All explanations clear and easy to understand, factually
correct
Organization of writing
Well organized, demonstrates logical sequencing and
structure.
design,
results
and