Why do so many of us shop at Ikea? All that stuff about offering quality Scandinavian design at low, low prices is only part of the story. The Swedish retail giant’s great triumph has been to turn furniture into a branch of the fashion industry. But more of that in a moment.
With stores in 33 countries, Ikea is one of the few retailing brands that can truly be called global; the appeal of its self-assembly furniture seems almost universal. Yet while people love the products, they often loathe the process of buying them.
The vast, hangar-style stores are hard to navigate, customer service hovers between perfunctory and non-existent, the check-out queues seem intended to punish consumers for their greed and typically, the whole unpleasant experience has to be repeated a week or two later because half the wanted items are out of stock.
The love-hate relationship is particularly strong in Britain. The love part of the equation is represented by the fact that, after Germany, the UK ties with the US as Ikea’s biggest market in the world; so either Britons have a particularly good eye for design or they are just plain tight.
The hate part is represented by the fact that the retailer’s wretched customer service is legendary and Ikea horror stories are one of the nation’s favourite conversation topics.
A lot of the bad feeling is attributable to government-induced market failure. In Britain, Ikea has more customers than it can cope with because strict planning controls on out-of-town developments have prevented the company from opening as many new stores as it would like.
In other words, demand exceeds supply, resulting in Soviet-style rationing whereby the most desirable goods go to customers with the greatest endurance rather than those with the greatest spending power.
But there is light at the end of the warehouse aisle. Last year, Ikea said it would build 10 smaller town centre stores in Britain to help meet demand, and won planning permission for the second of these, in Ashton-under-Lyne, Greater Manchester, recently.
Also this week, Ikea disclosed in The Daily Telegraph that it would test an internet retailing operation in some areas around London this year with a view to having a full online retailing service in the UK by next year…
So, to come back to the original question, why do people keep shopping at Ikea stores? Why do they put up with the long journey to an out-of-town shed, the stress of the shopping experience, the strange idea that they should be required to manufacture their own products and the head-banging frustration of trying to find anyone at the company interested in putting things right when they go wrong?
We cannot, of course, ignore the price factor. Anyone who has shopped at Ikea will be familiar with the experience of coming back with a car-load of things they never wanted or needed simply because the price was irresistible.
Like a no-frills airline, the company is able to offer low prices precisely because it does not cost its customers. Perhaps if it made that clearer in its advertising, people might complain a little less.
But what keeps people coming back in spite of it all is Ikea’s re-invention of luxury as cheap chic. Once, only posh people could afford well-designed furniture, with expensive pieces being handed down from generation to generation as heir- looms…
They say one in 10 Europeans is conceived in an Ikea bed. If anything is to be done about the continent’s declining birthrate, we had better hope the company survives a little longer than its furniture.
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