From hand and heart
Each Saturday, I practice willing dirt into submission AKA throwing pots at a local ceramic studio. The open practice time happens to coincide with the time the studio also operates as a shop.
I like overhearing the conversations that take place as people pore over the wares and the questions they ask. One frequent question is whether the pieces for sale are handmade onsite. An affirmative answer often seals the deal.
Why is that? Today we’ll talk about why we value products that are handmade.
Is handmade a real thing?
Most of the things we call “handmade” aren’t made solely by hand. Taking pottery as an example, nearly every step of the process involves mechanical and electrical tools that support the work of human hands.
Clay is dug up somewhere, compressed into blocks by machines, packaged, and brought to the studio in boxes by vehicle.
An electric pottery wheel turns the clay.
For items that are built by hand, a slab roller evenly rolls out the clay into sheets.
Molds are used to form the clay into three-dimensional shapes.
An electric mixer evenly distributes the color in glaze used to paint the pieces.
Instead of chopping down wood and building a fire, an electric kiln is used to fire the pieces.
Still, the final item is subsequently called “handmade”.
Is there a clear definition? It’s an issue Etsy grappled with almost ten years ago when the company decided to loosen what was allowed on the site under the banner of handmade. The final definition came down to “authorship, responsibility and transparency.” Before making the change, Etsy’s guide to what counted as handmade or not was 14,000 words long.
Making most physical products requires some human touch. So, what if what’s handmade (or not) is largely in what we call it?
Handmade as label
Given how fluid applying the handmade label can be, a study tested whether labeling a product as handmade impacts how we see it. The key was that, throughout the study, the labels for products changed while the products themselves did not.
In the first experiment, 147 students in the Netherlands saw four types of products – greeting cards, knives, jewelry, and a scarf—and gave their opinions on each. Each product came with a picture, price, and a description.
The key variation was in the description. Some people read that a given type of product was handmade, some read that it was machine-made, and some didn’t get any information about how the products were made.
Image source. An example of a product description: Handmade kitchen knives. Stainless steel, sandalwood handle. Set of three knives costing 90 EUR.
People rated how attractive the products were by answering questions including how likely they’d be to buy the product and how happy they’d be to receive it as a gift.
The handmade label influenced product attractiveness.
People found handmade items to be more attractive than the machine-made products as well as the products for which the mode of production was not mentioned. Machine-made and unknown-mode-of-production products were similarly attractive. This suggests that labeling a product as machine-made doesn’t make us look at it in a worse light. Instead, finding out that something is handmade has a positive effect on how we see it.
The positive glow of a handmade label wasn’t restricted to cards, knives, jewelry, and scarves. Follow-up experiments replicated the finding with other product types. People found dinner plates that were ostensibly hand-painted to be more attractive than the same plates presented as machine-painted. And they saw tables to be more attractive when presented as handmade rather than machine-made.
Why do we value the handmade?
What is it about handmade products that makes them more attractive?
To find out, researchers in the same study asked 114 participants to write down their thoughts and feelings about handmade items.
One of the most frequent themes to come up was love. Yes, love.
People expressed the belief that makers of handmade items have love for the products they make and the production process itself. As one person put it, “Handmade products are ... built with care and love.” Another alluded to love as a sort of secret ingredient: “There is something else in that product.... It is love.”
There were also other positive qualities that people attributed to handmade items. Handmade items take more effort to make. They’re associated with being expensive and high-quality. And they’re likely to be more unique than items not made by hand.
But the love idea was especially intriguing. Could one of the reasons that handmade items are attractive be because the label infuses them with love?
Love transfer
If handmade items convey love, then they should make particularly good gifts for those we love.
To test this idea, another experiment investigated what effect handmade labels have on perceptions of products intended to be gifts. Participants, who were 487 members of an Austrian consumer panel, imagined they were in the market for a gift for someone who was either close to them, like a significant other or relative, or a distant acquaintance.
They then saw typically gift-y product categories like ceramic mugs, soap, leather goods, and stationary. The products were presented as being made by companies known for creating either handmade or machine-made products.
For each category, people rated how likely they’d be to buy the product as a gift for the recipient they were thinking about. They also rated how much love the products conveyed, as well as the other positive attributes associated with handmade items (uniqueness, quality, effort, and being expensive).
When thinking about giving a gift to someone who was close, people preferred buying handmade rather than machine-made items. But that preference disappeared when thinking of buying a gift someone who was distant.
Love had something to do with it. After controlling for other positive attributes of handmade items, like uniqueness, perceiving love in a product increased the attractiveness of that product as a gift for loved ones.
Image source. Handmade items make for good gifts for those who are close to us. Or so we think, anyway.
We can see traces of this pattern in real life. Each year, online searches for “handmade” peak in November and December, right around the holiday gift giving season.
Image source. Searches for “handmade” peak before the holidays. A time many are thinking of giving and making gifts.
Dollar values
It’s all well and good that people say they value things that are handmade. But for makers of the handmade, an important question is whether this talk translates into action. Money action.
A final experiment tested people’s willingness to pay for items that were either presented as handmade or machine-made.
In this experiment, 302 people from a U.S. online consumer panel answered questions about Mother’s Day gifts. The topic was relevant, as Mother’s Day was coming up. People were told that as part of the study, they could win a bar of soap that could serve as a present for Mom. And not just any soap. French soap. Fancy, French soap.
But first they had to say what they thought the soap was worth. A complicated, but apparently understandable value estimation and lottery task ensued. People decided how much they would be willing to pay for the bar of soap from $0 to $15. They then entered a lottery where they could receive $15 or the soap and whatever remained of the $15 after the price of soap was subtracted. But they’d only get a chance to receive the soap if their reported price was higher than a randomly selected number. A lottery within a lottery.
To further ensure that participants were thinking of giving the soap to their moms, data from 39 participants wasn’t included in analyses because their mothers were no longer alive, “annulling the incentive compatibility of the task” since “the opportunity to win a gift for one’s mother is not meaningful for these participants”. True. But also, dark.
Now that we’ve covered the baroque study details, here’s the key manipulation. The fancy French soap was described as either handmade or machine-made.
The handmade label had an effect once again. People were willing to pay 17% more for the bar of soap when it was described as handmade vs. machine-made.
When does handmade pay off the most?
The handmade label was particularly powerful for big spenders. For those willing to pay most for the soap, the fact that it was labeled handmade increased their willingness to pay by 25%. The effect was much weaker for those willing to pay the least.
Image source, annotations added. Those willing to spend most on soap were swayed more by the handmade label.
So, it probably makes the most sense to advertise that a product is handmade when the product is expensive, or the target market is willing to fork over big bucks.
This makes me think of haute couture or luxury brands highlighting the craftsmanship and care that goes into their products. Another approach from the luxury clothing brand Loewe is to align with those who make goods by hand, even if they’re in other fields like glassblowing or tapestry, which they do by sponsoring a yearly prize for artisans.
When does the handmade effect fade?
There are a few situations that might cause the handmade effect to fade. One is when it’s clear that the heart is not in it. In one experiment, people were told about Spanish guitars made by hand by workers who participated in the activity for economic incentive. When things are made by hand but without love for the product or the process, the handmade effect disappears.
Another factor that might matter is the population. What are people’s lives like and what’s the typical mode of production that they expect? The study we talked about today was carried out with participants in Austria, the Netherlands, and the US. As the authors pointed out in one doozy of a sidenote, “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.”
I’m pretty sure that Subaru-driving, organic-granola-eating academics in scenic college towns is exactly the target market for shops like Ten Thousand Villages, long-time purveyors of handmade goods. (Seriously, though, check out the map of locations in the Northeast US. It’s uncanny.)
Perhaps in a population where the expected mode of production is handmade, machine-made items might be seen more positively. Machines can make many things that are objectively better quality and more uniform than humans can.
As the world relies more and more on automation, I don’t think the handmade will lose its luster. A machine can be precise and produce great quality items, but it would be a stretch to attribute it love for the product or the process. For that, we’ll look to makers.