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As you might expect, the competitive element of the open auction produced the highest price. Where people had held the mug for 30 seconds rather than 10 seconds the average bid was 60% higher ($3.91 versus $2.44)!
In the closed auction the difference was similar. The average price for people who had touched the mug for 30 seconds was almost 40% higher than those who'd held it for just 10.
Is this more evidence of loss aversion? It would seem that people develop an attachment to something simply by holding it - somehow just this action is sufficient to make people value it more highly.
Perhaps this shouldn't come as a surprise: as a species we evidently value possessions... and just as how triggering the facial muscles that are activated in a smile has been shown to make people feel happier, "possessing" something for a sufficient period of time simply through having it in our grasp is sufficient to make us feel we are losing something by letting it go.
When it comes to your own consumers it's worth considering how you can get them in contact with your product for sufficiently long for them to feel they are missing out by giving it back to you.
Source: Ohio State University (2009, January 12). You Can Look -- But Don't Touch. ScienceDaily. Retrieved January 19, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090107134535.htm
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© 2009 Philip Graves Consumer Behaviour Research Resource. All rights reserved.
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