Doing it Hard Way: Low Personal Control Drives Preference for High-Effort Products

Get stronger, healthier, skinnier, smarter, and cleaner with less work. Such messaging is hard to escape in today’s marketplace. At every turn, a product promises to help us improve in a variety of areas with exceptional ease. Consistent with such communication, research suggests that people often seek experiences that require the least effort (e.g., Child 1946, Russell and Mehrabian 1975). However, people also often appreciate more effortful experiences (Aronson and Mills 1959, Gibbs and Drolet 2003, Kivetz and Simonson 2003). Thus, we ask the question—when it comes to improving the self (and its extensions, such as the home), do consumers seek high or low effort products? We predict that feelings of control will be a critical determinant of whether consumers choose high or low effort products. Specifically, we posit that when feelings of control are low, individuals will want to re-establish control (e.g., Fiske, Morling and Stevens 1996). Consequently, they will prefer products that emphasize and demonstrate how their personal effort is required to generate results. We test this hypothesis across 5 studies.