Enjoy your work? Don't sell yourself short. Buyers are willing to pay more for products you enjoy producing

A multinational team of researchers published a new Journal of Marketing study that examines how a seller’s enjoyment in making a product influences buyers’ willingness to pay and the price the seller charges.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces like Etsy, Fiverr, and UpWork are some of the fastest growing businesses in the world. These vertically integrated markets where a single actor is responsible for both creating and selling the item are projected to be worth $355 billion by 2025, according to a study by PwC.

Compared to more traditional marketplaces, traditional signals of quality, such as brand name, are less relevant in the peer-to-peer space. Instead, sellers in these marketplaces directly tell potential buyers about themselves and the production processes behind their goods and services.

What should these sellers say in their bios and product descriptions? This new study finds that one of the best things they can mention is that they enjoy their work.

What the researchers say: “We suspect that many people who choose to sell things through peer-to-peer marketplaces enjoy making them. Yet, sellers rarely mention it. For example, in the profiles of 30,000 sellers across various peer-to-peer marketplaces, only about 1% of sellers mentioned production enjoyment,” the lead author said. “Over 15 experiments, we find consistent evidence that buyers are more interested in, are more likely to choose, and are willing to pay more for products or services that the seller enjoys producing.”

The research team also explored how production enjoyment influences the sellers’ decision to price products and services. Ironically, sellers are willing to accept a lower price—and do indeed charge less—for the products and services they enjoy producing. Although sellers also generally associate production enjoyment with higher quality, they do not rely on this inference in their pricing decisions.

One field study tested two ads on Facebook for a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist, one that mentioned production enjoyment (“I really enjoy SEO”) and one that was otherwise identical but did not contain these words. Small business owners were more likely to click on the ad that mentioned production enjoyment. The positive reactions that buyers have to sellers’ signals of production enjoyment occur over a broad range of jobs.

According to the researchers: “Across our studies, we examined over 100 different jobs and, in all cases, signaling enjoyment increase buyers’ willingness to pay.” This positive impact, they said, occurs because buyers interpret production enjoyment as a signal of a high-quality product or service. “After all, someone who really enjoys making jewelry or loves painting probably spends more time and focus on it than others. When buyers learn of this enjoyment, they then presume the product/service is high quality and are therefore more likely to buy it.”

Notably, signaling production enjoyment works best when the production process requires a lot of skill. Automation has made many production processes a lot easier. In situations where buyers assume the production process is largely automated (or assume the offering does not require much skill overall), production enjoyment does not impact buyers nearly as much.

But even in high-skill contexts, why do sellers charge less for products and services they enjoy producing? Like buyers, sellers also associate production enjoyment with high quality products and services, which should increase prices.

“We think sellers instead charge lower prices because the joy that they experience during the production process already compensates them for their work. In any case, it seems that production enjoyment carries signals for sellers that lead to different pricing decisions. Taken together, these findings are somewhat contradictory: sellers charge less money for products and services they enjoy producing, even though buyers are willing to pay more for them.”

When sellers mention production enjoyment in their profiles and marketing, buyers are more interested in their products and services. By comparing production enjoyment to a variety of other established cues of product quality (e.g., production effort) and identifying several moderators that determine the impact of this signal (e.g., required skill), this research gives sellers a useful framework for when and how to signal production enjoyment.

The researchers conclude that sellers should reconsider their willingness to charge for different products/services. This knowledge can also benefit buyers, who can recognize production enjoyment as a signal of a potential discount, because sellers charge less when they enjoy the production process. “In sum, if you enjoy the work you do, make sure you tell people! They will think you do better work and should be willing to pay you more for it.”

So, what? This study confirms something which other previous studies have hinted at: That buyers of goods or services are more willing to buy something that the seller gets joy from providing or making.

The reason for this is that the reward neurochemical dopamine—that which gives the joy in making the product or providing the service—has a contagious quality. It is also highly addictive and stimulates the uptake of the chemical in the brains of other people. This is why laughter is contagious

The buyer purchases the product or service in order to share the pleasure that the supplier had producing the item. Literally they buy for the fun of it.