Consumers Value Effort over Ease When Caring for Close Others

Abstract Many products and services are designed to make caregiving easier, from premade meals for feeding families to robo-cribs that automatically rock babies to sleep. Yet, using these products may come with a cost: consumers may feel they have not exerted enough effort. Nine experiments show that consumers feel like better caregivers when they put more effort into caregiving tasks than when they use effort-reducing products to perform such tasks. The beneficial effect of effort on caregivers’ self-perceptions is driven by the symbolic meaning of caregiving (i.e., the task’s ability to show love) independent of the quality of care provided (i.e., the task’s ability to meet needs) and is most pronounced when expressing symbolic meaning is most important: when caregivers are providing emotional support rather than physical support, when they are caring for another person with whom they have a close relationship, and when there is a relationship norm that investing effort shows love. Finally, this work demonstrates that marketers can make effort-reducing products more appealing by acknowledging caregivers’ efforts rather than emphasizing how these products make caregiving less effortful. Together, these findings expand our current understanding of effort, caregiving, and consumer choice in close relationships.