ikea campaign case study

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Ikea target audience, ikea marketing channels, ikea marketing strategy, ikea marketing strategy 2024: a case study.

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Ikea serves the unique functional needs of each target audience, with special attention to 16-34-year-old adults. It has solutions for:

• Single people not living at home
• Newly married couples
• Families with the youngest child under six
• Older married couples with dependent children
• No children families
• Labor force
• Professionals 

Thus, it uses the following types of product positioning :

• Mono-segment positioning. It appeals to the needs and wants of a single customer segment that is cost-conscious and prefers value for money.
• Adaptive positioning. It believes in periodically repositioning products and services to adapt to changes in customer preferences. Its Swedish furniture chain considers the dynamic nature of customer preferences. For instance, its latest products reflect increasing minimalism on the global scale. 

Ikea utilizes the power of the following marketing channels: 

• Mobile Application
• WebEngage: Email, SMS, and Whatsapp Marketing
• Social Media
• Telecalling
• Commercials

The Ikea marketing strategy contributes majorly to its success because it's original, imaginative, and distinctive while maintaining a transparent value proposition.

A Creative, Consistent Brand Theme

From the Swedish national colors on its buildings to rich meatballs in its store cafeterias, Ikea's marketing strategy reflects its cultural heritage proudly. It infuses all elements of their identity with a sense of self-assuredness that maintains their identity in the market of stiff competition. 

Emphasizing Affordability and Sustainability 

Understanding that a simple tiered strategy won't encourage repeat business, Ikea extends customization, flexibility, and mix-and-match furniture modules. It effectively combines the elements of affordability and sustainability in its marketing strategy to ensure success.

While the furniture options don't pledge a lifelong guarantee, the products are built to last. Even its reusable shopping bags reflect its commitment to sustainability.

Sponsorship and Influencers 

IKEA-sponsored comedic series Easy to Assemble. Its innovative content marketing was way different from a furniture product demo. Incorporating sponsored digital marketing campaigns and social media influencers have boosted the Ikea marketing strategy. 

Ikea’s Easy to Assemble Series

Exceptional In-store Experience

Ikea brilliantly displays products employing the best lighting systems to generate more sales. It strategically arranges best-matched items in mock rooms to encourage impulse purchases and inspire decor. The company also extends excellent customer service to provide a memorable experience and incite customers to come back for more.

Ikea’s Store Decor for Inspiration

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Website and Mobile Application Marketing

Ikea ensures an optimal mobile website's speed, button displays and gesture controls on its website and mobile app to retain and attract individuals to the site. It carefully invests in its UI/UX , enquiry-based chatbot, and regular updates on new offers, discounts, and promotions. 

One of the most successful marketing moves includes downloading its 3D modeling app to envision a dream home. It's one of its most successful marketing moves that allows IKEA to upsell its low-demand items by creating a desire in its customers to revamp the room.

Ikea’s Website With Engaging Content

Ikea's SEO (Search Engine Optimization)

Ikea's marketing strategy aims at enhancing the site's visibility for relevant searches to attract the attention of new and existing customers. It includes the right product-specific keywords and Google advertisements to further augment its organic ranking .  

Ikea Ranking for Bookcases on Google’s First Page

Ikea's SMM (Social Media Marketing)

Ikea's handles are very active on digital marketing platforms like Facebook, Instagram , Twitter, and Youtube . Their digital presence is impressive, with more than 30 Million likes on Facebook, 1 Million followers on Instagram, 5.3k followers on Twitter, and 41.2k subscribers on YouTube.

Ikea’s Instagram Profile

Its Instagram bio links to its website. The website also has links to its various social media posts. Its 'view shop' and 'call' options for product catalog and direct assistance, respectively, are a testament to a well-crafted Ikea marketing strategy.   

Ikea’s Youtube Advertisements 

IKEA also conducts free online workshops that lure lots of enthusiastic customers, resulting in gaining leads.

Ikea’s Online Workshop Ad

Content Marketing

Ikea relies on its content marketing strategy to create a distinguished presence amongst furniture brands. Its commercials, print ads, social media, and website stands out with attention-grabbing content. It combines innovation and humor to present the brand's core values and inspire people. 

Ikea’s Captivating Commercial 

Ikea Marketing Strategy bears testimony to a well-thought and structured marketing venture. Sign-up for our Digital Marketing Specialist and learn more about marketing case studies published by Harvard Business. You will be taught by experts from facebook and Purdue University. Sign-up for the course TODAY!

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How IKEA Evolved Its Strategy While Keeping Its Culture Constant

If you’re leading your team through big changes, this episode is for you.

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The Swedish furniture maker IKEA found huge success producing quality furniture at affordable prices. But in 2017, the company was at a crossroads. Its beloved founder had died, and the exponential rise of online shopping posed a new challenge.

In this episode, Harvard Business School professors Juan Alcacer and Cynthia Montgomery break down how IKEA developed, selected, and embraced new strategic initiatives, while fortifying its internal culture. They studied how IKEA made big changes for the future and wrote a business case about it.

They explain how the company reworked its franchise agreements to ensure consistency among its global stores. They also discuss how IKEA balanced global growth with localization, developing all-new supply chains.

Key episode topics include: strategy, growth strategy, disruptive innovation, emerging markets, leadership transition, competitive strategy, company culture, succession.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

• Listen to the original HBR Cold Call episode: IKEA Navigates the Future While Staying True to Its Culture (2021)
• Find more episodes of Cold Call
• Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business. The Swedish furniture maker IKEA found huge success producing quality furniture at affordable prices. But in 2017, they were at a crossroads. Their beloved founder had died, and the exponential rise of online shopping posed a new challenge. Today, we bring you a conversation about how to develop, select, and embrace a new strategic initiative – with Harvard Business School professors Juan Alcacer and Cynthia Montgomery. They studied how IKEA made big changes for the future while fortifying its internal culture and its external identity. In this episode, you’ll learn how the company reworked its franchise agreements to create a more managerial and modern culture, and ensure consistency among its global stores. You’ll also learn how they balanced global growth with localization – including new supply chains. This episode originally aired on Cold Call in June 2021. Here it is.

BRIAN KENNY: For some of the world’s most celebrated founders, the entrepreneurial drive kicks off at an early age. Mark Zuckerberg developed Facebook in his Harvard dorm room at the age of 18. Michael Dell made $200,000 upgrading computers in his first year of business, he was 19. Before Jack Dorsey founded Twitter, he created a dispatch routing platform for taxis in his hometown of St. Louis, while he was in middle school. But then there’s Ingvar Kamprad who began selling matches at the age of five to neighbors in his rural Swedish homestead. By the age of seven, he was buying matches in bulk in Stockholm and selling them at a profit back home. Ingvar learned early on that you can sell things at a low price and still make a good profit. A philosophy that fueled the success of his next business venture, IKEA. Today on Cold Call , we welcome professors, Juan Alcacer, and Cynthia Montgomery to discuss their case entitled, “What IKEA Do We Want?” I’m your host, Brian Kenny, and you’re listening to Cold Call on the HBR Presents network. Juan Alcacer’s research focuses on the international strategies of firms in the telecommunications industry and Cynthia Montgomery studies the unique roles leaders play in developing and implementing strategy. They are both members of the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School. And thank you both for joining me today. It’s great to have you on the show.

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: Thanks Brian.

JUAN ALCACER: Thank you for having us.

BRIAN KENNY: You’re both here for the first time, so we’ll try and make it painless so we can get you to come back on. I think people are going to love hearing about IKEA and getting an inside view. Most of us have had that experience of being like mice in a maze. When you go into an IKEA store, you are compelled to walk through the whole place. It’s really brilliant, so many of the touches and things that they’ve done. And this case helps to shine a light, I think, on some of those decisions and how they were made. I had no idea how old the company was. So just starting with its history, it’s going to be good to hear about that. Juan, I want you to start, if you could, by telling us what would your cold call be to start this case in the classroom?

JUAN ALCACER: I like to start the case, bringing in the emotions of the students and their relationship with IKEA. So most of our students have had some experience with IKEA. So I’d just start asking how many of you have been in IKEA, and then I’d start asking why? Why did you go to IKEA? And this time telling you all the things that you just mentioned, for instance, walking through the maze, going to eat the meatballs. So they started bringing all these small, decisions that were made through the years, that made IKEA, IKEA.

BRIAN KENNY: Who doesn’t love the meatballs? Cynthia, let me ask you, you’re both in the Strategy unit at Harvard Business School, there’s a lot of strategy underlying this whole case. I’m curious as to what made you decide to look at IKEA and sort of, how does it relate to your scholarship and the things that you think about; the questions you try to answer?

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: I’m really interested in the choices firms make about who they will be and why they will matter? The core questions at the identity of a company. In 1976 Kamprad laid out very, very carefully. What IKEA would do, who it would be. He identified its product range. The customers it would serve, the company’s pricing policy, all in a document called, The Testament of a Furniture Dealer. And he described it as, “the essence of our work.” And 45 years later, it was still required reading for all of the IKEA’s employees. It’s probably the most compelling statement of corporate purpose I’ve ever seen.

BRIAN KENNY: Remarkable in a company that’s based on furniture. It was a very, sort of powerful thing. There’s an exhibit in the case that shows the whole Testament. Maybe we can dig a little bit into the history here. I alluded to the fact that it’s been around for a long time. Cynthia, just tell us a little bit about how the company came to be and how it evolved over time.

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: IKEA started actually as a mail-order business in Sweden and in the late 1940s Kamprad noticed that despite a lot of demand for furniture, agreements between the furniture manufacturers and retailers were keeping furniture prices real high. He was interested in a different set of customers. And he decided that to attract farmers and working class customers, he needed to be able to offer quality furniture at lower prices.

BRIAN KENNY: What were some of the early challenges that they faced. I’m also curious a little bit about the Swedish culture and how that sort of factors in here. Because there was definitely undertones of that factoring into the way they set this up.

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: It’s a virtue to be frugal and to be very careful about how you spend your money. And that made a huge impression, particularly given his background, growing up on a farm for Kamprad, he decided he really wanted to lower the prices of furniture and began to do so. And it turned out that there was a very, very strong response from other furniture manufacturers who basically said that they were going to boycott him. They wouldn’t allow him into their furniture fairs, him personally, as well as his company. And so in turn, what happened was that they also pressured local suppliers not to sell to a IKEA anymore, basically trying to force him out of the market. And what happened was that that actually drove Kamprad to Poland as a source of supply because local firms wouldn’t supply him anymore. And in the process, he discovered that Polish manufacturers could actually make furniture at far, far lower costs than Swedish manufacturers. And that essentially gave IKEA a cost structure that was more like a difference in kind, than a difference in degree. And that proved enormously important to building almost insurmountable competitive advantage for IKEA.

BRIAN KENNY: He was also really keen with innovations early on that things like the restaurant area and the childcare space, what were some of the insights that drove him to make those kinds of decisions?

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: One of the things that he decided quite early on is that he wanted to have the stores located out of town. And the reason is because land there was much, much cheaper. So he built these ,as you described earlier, Brian, these gigantic stores on the outskirts of town and they had lots and lots of square footage and lots and lots of merchandise, but you know, it took time to get there. It took time to shop there and what he wanted to do was make it worth it for the customers to make the trip, worth it for them to spend a lot of time in the stores. So he decided to add restaurants and the now famous meatballs, which come in several flavors, actually around the world, and to add childcare centers that would care for young children while the parents shopped. On the low cost front, he was innovative in other ways, he actually borrowed the idea of flat pack from another innovator, but he’s the one that actually brought it to life in such a big way. Then he discovered that if you let the clients go in and pick off the furniture packs themselves, they could even save more money and lower the costs in the store.

BRIAN KENNY: So they have a pretty complicated org structure, when we start to dig into some of the nuance of the case. Juan, could you describe for us, how they’re set up from an org structure standpoint?

JUAN ALCACER: You have to realize that coming from Sweden, which is one of the countries with the highest taxation for corporations in the world. So early on, they decided to find some organization structure and legal structure that would allow them to lower taxes. And that created basically an ownership based on foundations, based in the Netherlands. And they decided, early on, to separate the company into pieces. One is the franchise store, which is basically running the brand and running the management image of the brand. And then the operational part of the company, which is a franchisee. And for many years, those two things were separated. The franchisee was also in charge of manufacturing and so forth. So it was a very strange structure, that was put in place in part by the charisma and the leadership style of Ingvar Kamprad. If I can go back to your question about the Swedish culture. One of the things that, at least for me, is very striking is that when you look at multinationals, there’s a thing called the liability of being a foreigner, which means that when you go to another country, you have some disadvantages. And you try to mitigate that liability of being a foreigner, by pretending to be of that particular country. IKEA went with a totally different approach, they’re totally Swedish. Names of their products are impossible to pronounce. The fact that they have meatballs, they have their Swedish flags all over the place. They embrace the Swedish spirit as a part of the brand. You don’t see many multinationals with that. That makes IKEA what it is today.

BRIAN KENNY: I definitely think that’s part of the appeal here in the US, for sure, is people being exposed to the Swedish culture in a way they never had before. What is the culture of the company like, what’s it like to work there?

JUAN ALCACER: We went to both the Netherlands and to Sweden and we had a great time. It’s a very egalitarian culture. All the VP’s, high-level managers, none of them have an assistant. Only the CEO has an assistant. They don’t have offices, so everybody shares an open space. The whole place is decorated with IKEA furniture, everybody talks to each other by their first name. It’s very collegial, very friendly.

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: I would add to that. I think IKEA was incredibly generous to us, in the sense that they shared all kinds of confidential, internal documents and were really willing to talk in a very open and forthright way, about both their strengths and their challenges, which was incredibly refreshing. And as Juan said, that it was very egalitarian, and not surprisingly IKEA was one of the first companies to embrace democratic design. And that spirit was everywhere in the company.

BRIAN KENNY: Cynthia, what would you say are some of the keys to their success over the years?

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: I’d say that IKEA basically picked a lane and stuck with it. They had clarified, as I said at the top of the show, very, very carefully about what they wanted to do, who they wanted to be. And what they said is, look, this is what we’re going to be about. We’re going to offer an extensive range of practical, well-designed furnishings at low prices. And we’re going to serve the many, not the few. And the many are those with limited financial resources. When you have such clarity about what you want to do, then you can set out and try to maximize how you approach that. Essentially IKEA built a system, to do exactly that, extremely well and their distinctiveness made them truly an iconic firm. And it’s great when you talk with students about, what’s the purpose of your business?, What are you doing? What’s interesting is that oftentimes they can describe much more carefully what IKEA is doing, than what their own businesses doing. The last thing I would add, is that as Juan one said, they’re really synonymous with Sweden and they put that right out there. It’s almost like the way that Coca-Cola is synonymous with the US. And that has been a big part of their advantage.

BRIAN KENNY: Okay. So we’ve painted a very rosy picture for IKEA, but it’s an HBS case. So there’s tension, inevitably. So let’s dig in a little bit to where the case brings us. I’m going to mispronounce his name. I hope I don’t, but Torbjörn Lööf is that close?

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: Yeah.

BRIAN KENNY: He is the protagonist in the case. And he is stepping into a leadership role here really after an iconic leader has stepped back and that’s a challenge. Any time that happens, and a leader has to step in. And as he starts to sort of peek underneath the hood a little bit, he starts to see some of the challenges that IKEA is facing in this now seventh decade, I guess, of their existence. So Juan, maybe you can set that up for us a little bit.

JUAN ALCACER: It’s not only that he is stepping in the shadow of a leader that created the company. It’s that the company is still controlled by the family. So this is not a public firm, this is a private firm. So, he had to basically walk a very, very thin line, trying to take IKEA towards the future, but still preserving the past. And he had basically two main tasks, one is short term, that organization restructure that we were talking about, that was very complicated was created products. As I said before, the franchisee, which is basically the one that was running all the operations, was also the manufacturer. But there were other franchises. So for instance, the operations in Middle East are run by another company. So they wanted to create a system of transparency, that all the franchises are run the same way. When you have a franchisee that has basically represented 80% of your sales, and the ones that are representing 2% or 3%, there is an imbalance of power. So they tried to create a structure that is more managerial, that is more modern, that will allow to create incentives for new franchisees to come into the system. So that transaction was basically transferring production and transferring the functions that were in the franchisee back to the franchisor. There were 25,000 people that have to move from one place to another.

BRIAN KENNY: Wow.

JUAN ALCACER: They didn’t move physically, but in terms of the legal status they shift around. And the second is to bring IKEA to the world. What they observed is that there were some changes in demographics, they were targeting the low-income, what they call the thin wallets of the world, but it turned out that people that would go to IKEA are not thin wallets anymore. These people have already moved towards the middle-class and they also have this whole, to increase the number of consumers to three billion, and that meant that they have to basically grow globally, at a rate that they have never done, before they had two or three markets, like China and India. They also have the issue of eCommerce, to pick up and every retailer in the world is dealing with that. So, it’s two steps. One, getting the house in order, and second one, creating a path for the future for IKEA to become an icon for the next 75 years.

BRIAN KENNY: Yeah. And I also think at some level it’s hard to sustain that original mission that they set out with, when you’re trying to expand so rapidly and bring in a much larger audience. Cynthia, I don’t know if you have other observations about these changes they were facing.

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: Absolutely. Because one thing is that you can look at the challenges that came from expanding into new geographies. But the other thing that they found in a large study that they did, is that there were challenges in their core business as well, that the countries they’d been in for a number of years, and what I’ll call the big blue box stores, mostly in developed countries. What they found is that increasingly many of their customers in those markets wanted new conveniences. They wanted stores that were located closer to city centers because a number of people say in their late twenties, early thirties are not driving and don’t have cars. And they found that there was an increasing demand for delivery and assembly services for shopping online. These trends are worrying to a huge number of retailers, but particularly a challenge to IKEA because low price, low, low price, so low that that people can recognize the difference. That being at the heart of their strategy. And customers’ willingness to spend time getting to the store, hauling furniture about, ultimately assembling it. Those are at the very, very heart of their low-cost strategy and their very distinctive value proposition. It was a big challenge within the developed markets as well.

BRIAN KENNY: And depending on where they went in the world, a different set of challenges pops up almost everywhere. Juan, you mentioned earlier that they pushed back against localization, but is that a sustainable strategy? When you’re trying to go into entirely new markets like China and India.

JUAN ALCACER: The beauty of IKEA is that they found a segment across different cultures that was very similar. College students the United States, that needed to have furniture for a few years only, it could be young couples that are opening a new house, in some places it’s immigrants that are moving from one country to another country that need to buy furniture, but they don’t have the money to do so. So there was this very common segment across the world that they were able to then define, that allows them to have basically 80% of their line, of their range, is common across countries. And they have around 10% to 20% that varies by country. Now, when they go to China, and they go to India, they find that the changes have to be of a higher scale for three reasons. One, the tastes are different, also the materials, when you are going to India and you are going to houses that are in a high humidity environment, the type of wood that you can use is different. Now you start, not only changing the look of the product but you also have to change how you made it. And the third big challenge is when you look at what is defined as thin wallet, in these markets, is really thin. It’s not thin wallet in Sweden, it’s not thin wallet in the United States. So, you have to go to prices that are really, really low. And that means that you are already a low cost producer but you have to go even lower. That means that you have to change your supplier, so it starts changing the fundamental parts of the business model that they created through the years.

BRIAN KENNY: And it could probably, pretty easily, get away from you. So this does call for a strategy. Cynthia, can you describe for us what the three roads forward are? This was sort of underpinned their strategy going forward and how they were going to deal with some of these challenges.

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: Basically, the three roads, the first was affordability, as Juan said, this isn’t affordability in the way that they, at the level at which they’ve traditionally thought about it. This is affordability for wallets that are either very thin or actually where the willingness to pay just isn’t as high, because they’re accustomed to having goods that are at very low prices. So they wanted to attack affordability for people who could not afford IKEA today. They cared a lot about accessibility. They’ve got to reach and interact with people where they are. And the last is sustainability, and they felt really, really strongly about this. And I think much in line with what you see with a number of other countries in Europe, that they cared a lot about the sustainability of the products and wanted to make a positive impact for people, society and the planet. And they’re taking on all three of these aspirations at once.

BRIAN KENNY: You have written many cases, I’m sure that parallel this, what are some other firms that have faced similar challenges and maybe figured out a way to deal with the same sets of challenges?

JUAN ALCACER: The challenge of going overseas, we didn’t write cases about multinationals for many years. They always have this tension between coordination in headquarters and adaptability in each one of the subsidiaries. So IKEA was very good at playing that game for many, many years. In a way they were going to countries that were somehow similar to Sweden. Now that they are venturing to countries that are farther away in many dimensions, not only physically, but also in terms of economic distribution, in terms of taste. They are seeing this tension to be amplified. We have seen that in many companies, Procter and Gamble has been doing that for years and years, Unilever has been doing that for years and years. IKEA has done it for 75 years. They went overseas very early on. But now the challenge is a little bit higher. The other challenge is that Cynthia also mentioned, which is basically adapting to new technologies and new demographics. Every retailer is facing that. Any supermarket, any chain that has been selling in brick and mortar is facing those challenges. So, what is interesting about IKEA is that they are facing these all at the same time and they’re facing this during the process of transition from the leader that created the company to a new set of managers that are more professional and are not part of the family.

BRIAN KENNY: You mentioned technology. I’m just curious, the role that the internet plays in this, because now everybody can see, you know, through YouTube and other things, what the experience is like from one place to the other, and how important is consistency across all those geographies, versus a little bit of localization to make it feel a little bit more like this is the China version of IKEA versus the European version of IKEA. Cynthia, do you have thoughts on that?

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: That’s the real challenge here in the sense that, how do you take this whole model that has been developed over so many years? And it’s very, very hard to imitate, which has given them a lot of strength over the years, but when the environment changes, instead of responding in a piecemeal way to all kinds of external stimuli, it’s how do you take this whole model and evolve it in some coherent way that stays true to the iconic sense of who IKEA is? I really see it fundamentally, as an existential question for IKEA.

BRIAN KENNY: Such a great point. Look, I want to thank both of you. This has been a really interesting discussion about a brand that we all know and have experienced many times firsthand. I have one more question for each of you before we part ways. And that would be if there’s one thing you want people to take away from this case, what would it be? Juan, let’s start with you.

JUAN ALCACER: What I would like listeners to take from this, is we have this mentality of growth, growth, growth, and expanding and doing different things, and when you look at IKEA, you have to wonder, is it better that IKEA stays doing what they do well, or do they have to keep growing and entering all these markets and adapt to overseas. We have this basic assumption that growth at any cost should be the goal. I would like the listeners, when they look at the case and think about the cases, to question that very basic assumption.

BRIAN KENNY: Cynthia?

CYNTHIA MONTGOMERY: One of the things about IKEA that I think it’s really, really important to know is that they really brought something different to the world and they did it in a very compelling way. So at the heart, to do something that’s distinctive, that adds value. It comes through really strong in the IKEA story. At the same time, when the environment changes, how do you evolve, is really challenging. And so the fact that they’re being so open in how they’re confronting this, I think there’s a lot to learn there. It’s a challenge. I think it’s really important to remember what’s at the heart of this company, is that they’re really bringing something that’s very unique and they need to continue to do that.

BRIAN KENNY: Juan Alcacer, Cynthia Montgomery, thank you so much for joining me. The case is called, “What IKEA do we want?” Thanks again.

JUAN ALCACER: Thank you.

HANNAH BATES: You just heard Harvard Business School professors Juan Alcacer and Cynthia Montgomery in conversation with Brian Kenny on Cold Call .  We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from the Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review. We’re a production of the Harvard Business Review. If you want more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos like this, find it all at HBR dot org. This episode was produced by Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Special thanks to Maureen Hoch, Adi Ignatius, Karen Player, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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IKEA Marketing Strategy: 7 Tactics and Takeaways (Infographic)

Over the years, IKEA has become a favored furniture brand for an impressively wide customer base, from college students acquiring their requisite first futon to long-time homeowners who need a new bookcase or crib.

Quality products, affordable prices and a do-it-yourself assembly attitude are big reasons for IKEA’s success. Plus, it doesn’t hurt that the company’s marketing strategy is second to none.

What Makes IKEA’s Marketing So Successful?

IKEA’s brand identity ranks among some of the most iconic logos, campaigns and companies in recent history. Just like Coca-Cola has its signature colors and script, there’s hardly any mistaking IKEA’s bold lettering or its blue and yellow themes. Like Apple, the company’s retail stores offer up exciting customer experiences from the moment you spot their unmistakable facades on the horizon.

Who would have thought we’d get so excited about the prospect of hauling home a few flat boxes and whipping out a hex key to build our own furniture?

IKEA’s marketing strategy — encompassing both more traditional means, as well as a digital marketing strategy — is so successful because it’s original, distinctive and imaginative while also maintaining a clear value proposition.

If I told you I owned a LAIVA bookcase, then chances are, without even being able to picture the item, you’d know:

• It comes from the notably Nordic furniture company IKEA.
• It didn’t break my budget.
• It was easy to transport home.
• After I got it back to my apartment, I put it together myself.
• It probably boasts a chic, modern style.
• I’m going to keep talking about how much I love it to everybody I know.

That’s the power of IKEA’s marketing.

What Marketing Strategies Does IKEA Use?

Each element of IKEA’s outreach strategy is carefully curated to support its brand identity and to create memorable customer experiences:

• The company employs a consistent and easily recognizable theme , from its product names to its color scheme.
• Mixed-and-matched products are available to suit each customer’s unique style and needs.
• Product offerings walk the fine line between mass-market affordability and reusable durability .
• Sponsored content with creative partners expands the brand’s appeal to new demographics.
• All sale items are displayed in a way that’s designed to inspire the customer’s vision .
• The brand is participatory , and people are encouraged to take IKEA ideas and run with them.
• IKEA leverages the latest technology to provide cutting-edge experiences consistent with its ethos.

Let’s explore each of these points in greater detail.

Tactic No. 1: A Creative, Consistent Brand Theme

Imagine a world in which IKEA’s American stores are draped in red, white and blue. They just serve hot dogs and hamburgers in the cafeteria, and every forgettable furniture name fades into all the others.

Don’t blend in. It’s better to wear your roots proudly!

From the Swedish national colors emblazoned on its buildings to the sensational meatballs served in its store cafeterias, IKEA sports its cultural heritage proudly.

Missing your IKEA meatball fix? We’ve created a recipe for you to recreate this delicious dish in the comfort of your own home #IKEAmeatballs pic.twitter.com/d89lRsJxH7 — IKEA UK (@IKEAUK) April 20, 2020

Take careful note, though: There’s a dash of humor and humility inherent in this approach. IKEA’s take is lighthearted, through and through.

The Takeaway: Know Thyself

Tongue-in-cheek isn’t the only way to own your brand. It’s just important to figure out what you’re about and to infuse all elements of your identity with a strong sense of self-assuredness.

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Tactic No. 2: Emphasizing the Modular Nature of Furniture Options

Not every market is blessed with the ability to allow for a seemingly endless assortment of customer choices. But a simple tiered strategy doesn’t give your brand many opportunities for encouraging repeat business. If your customers already feel that they’ve invested in the latest and greatest, then they don’t have much incentive to come back for more until their original purchase is broken or depleted.

IKEA encourages flexibility, customization and mix-and-match furniture modules. The combination of affordability and sustainability is key to this success.

After you meander through IKEA’s dazzling showrooms, remember that you’re basically ejected into a warehouse. Outsourcing some of the logistics and assembly to consumers helps the company streamline its supply chain and reduce prices for the end user.

Putting together an IKEA product for yourself helps free the business up to focus on its own sustainability initiatives .

The Takeaway: Give Your Customers a Reason To Explore Their Options

Right now, if you only provide one right answer for your customer, focus on finding out how you can help them create their own original response instead.

Tactic No. 3: Making Reusability Convenient and Affordable

In an era of planned obsolescence, it may seem counterintuitive for a furniture company to emphasize reusability. To be fair, the key points of the IKEA brand value proposition that we mentioned earlier don’t necessarily lead with a guarantee that every product will last a lifetime. But this company is far from disposable.

It’s likely that you’ve seen the iconic FRAKTA bag out in the wild at some point, perhaps even being used in lieu of a leash on mass transit.

This is FRAKTA. Happy to keep subway doggos compliant. 14/10 https://t.co/iACNEBefr1 — IKEA USA (@IKEAUSA) September 26, 2019

While the beds and desks you’ll find at IKEA aren’t handcrafted by experts who pledge a lifelong guarantee tethered to their personal honor, the company still provides its customers with products that are built to last. Even IKEA’s durable, reusable shopping bags stand as a testament to the company’s commitment to sustainability.

The Takeaway: Give Them Something (Reusable) To Talk About

Put your brand’s eco-friendly values on display with long-lasting products that are built with a sustainable purpose in mind.

Tactic No. 4: An Expansive, User-Friendly Approach to Branded Content

Today’s average TikTok video boasts production values that would put even some professional-grade web series from the late 2000s to shame. That said, the IKEA-sponsored comedic series “Easy to Assemble” was a bold, odd, irreverent and ambitious undertaking that featured talented celebrities like Illeana Douglas, Jeff Goldblum, Jane Lynch and others.

This innovative content marketing was far from a furniture product demo, but the IKEA branding was everywhere.

Sometimes it pays to give creatives free rein over the project.

After all, when has it ever felt natural to sponsor a series and then casually work the featured product into the storyline for some tight close-ups of the logo? Why not just plaster the brand everywhere and let your target consumers enjoy some quality, original content?

The Takeaway: Be Adventurous

Don’t be afraid to take new steps into the wild, weird and unknown. It’ll get people talking, especially if you partner with Illeana Douglas.

Tactic No. 5: Capturing the Best Angle for Each Item of Furniture

IKEA’s classic catalogs have been a brand fixture for a long time. Carefully staging each product in order to inspire the viewer is something that this business does exceptionally well. Even inside IKEA stores, customers wind through elaborate room-based displays in order to imagine how they could best put each item to use.

There’s an unstated but unmistakable aspirational component to this publication, too. IKEA masterfully connects with its market base to evoke ideal living spaces tastefully facilitated by the company’s products.

The Takeaway: Don’t Skimp on the Staging

It takes more than just perfect lighting or the right angle to make your products stand out. Let them sparkle by putting each object in a larger context for your audience.

Tactic No. 6: Capturing the Attention of Brand Influencers Effortlessly

Furniture companies may not be lifestyle brands, but they still seek a strong sense of loyalty from their customers, new and old. For IKEA, that goes doubly, considering the powerful, unique brand it has developed over the years.

Sponsored digital marketing campaigns have their uses, but organic influencer appeal may just be the way forward for increasingly skeptical millennials, not to mention the socially savvy contingent known as Gen Z. Nothing can replace a genuine social media connection.

The Takeaway: Stay Open to Outside Influencers

If you’re confident in your brand and your product, be ready and welcoming for attention from social media influencers.

Tactic No. 7: A Brand That Blurs the Lines of Reality

IKEA realized that emerging technologies can help encourage customers to become home decor visionaries. No longer do you have to simply imagine whether a certain piece of furniture would match your given aesthetic. Now you can see it.

The IKEA Place app uses augmented reality (AR) to give customers a real view of how items will fit into their living space.

This is a new evolution in an exciting lineage. IKEA has always used digital tools to help customers picture how products will fit, or if they’ll fit, into their lives.

The Takeaway: Think of New and Creative Ways To Use AR and VR

As AR and virtual reality (VR) become more sophisticated and widely available, savvy marketers will explore new options for facilitating exciting new customer experiences.

IKEA Marketing Mix

At the foundation of IKEA’s marketing strategy are four P’s: price, product, place and promotion. Each plays a distinct role in maintaining IKEA’s prevalence. 

• Price : Low prices, affordable to the average consumer, are the basis of IKEA’s pricing strategy. Much of IKEA’s ability to sustainably control costs comes down to their efficient manufacturing processes, facilitating affordable furniture/household goods for an expansive market. 
• Product: IKEA has a wide range of products, generally spanning furniture, bathroom staging, beds and decorative products, among others. As generalists, IKEA has something on offer for everyone — at an affordable price. 
• Place: Spanning 50 countries with 350+ store locations, IKEA products are highly accessible. In the same spirit of accessibility and ease, many IKEA stores are also paired with restaurants and baby-handling areas. 
• Promotion: IKEA adopts a host of marketing channels, covering traditional means — such as TV ads and billboards — and more conventional channels — such as adopting SEO, PPC, targeted emails and digital marketing methodologies more generally. 

The combination of these four factors contributes to IKEA’s ongoing success, yielding its brand to be a household name across the globe. 

IKEA’s Target Audience: Touching All Bases

At the heart of IKEA’s appeal is their positioning as a ‘provider to all.’ From $10 or less holiday goods to household goods that can be purchased with spare change, their tagline of ‘affordable products for everyday life’ is evident throughout the IKEA product line. 

While the notion of “a friend to all is a friend to none” more often than none, IKEA has successfully walked the fine line of appealing to budget-conscious university students and elderly consumers alike, and everyone in-between. Or as they put it, “Stretch your imagination, not your budget.” This is to say that the notion of accessibility and affordability is communicated right throughout their marketing funnel, ensuring that people from all walks of life know that IKEA likely has something for them. 

IKEA: Swedish for Innovative Furniture Marketing

OK, maybe that’s not a literal translation. That said, this company has pioneered some truly original marketing strategies over the years. And we can’t wait to see how the brand evolves in the future.

Editor’s Note: Updated on November 2023.

By Michael O'Neill

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IKEA Retail Therapy case study: How IKEA creatively used search to get products seen where they wouldn’t normally be seen

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In November 2016, IKEA launched the “Retail Therapy” ad campaign created by the Swedish advertising agency Åkestam Holst, which renamed Ikea products after commonly searched relationship problems in Sweden. This case study looks at how search can drive product discovery by incorporating an SEO perspective into product naming – while bringing a smile on people’s faces.

IKEA RETAIL THERAPY from Ourwork on Vimeo .

Case study summary

• The campaign was based on a creative and disruptive search strategy • The Retail Therapy campaign was covered in multiple international news media • IKEA successfully improved their SERP ranking

The challenge

In most industries the first organic search results are highly coveted and it’s getting harder and harder for marketers to get – and maintain - content shown at the top of search results. Search engine optimization (SEO) is changing fast and increased competition for keywords can quickly cause your content to slip down the SERP page. Therefore, today’s marketers must constantly look for new ways to improve their SEO and beat competition. There are a few general SEO tips available but with their recent “Retail Therapy” campaign, IKEA decided not to follow general rules but instead think out of the box by focusing on a broader (and unexpected) content territory.

The solution

As a part of their ‘Where life happens’ campaign; the furniture giant launched a new website called Retail Therapy featuring some of their typical products, but with a bit of a twist. Developed by Åkestam Holst, a Swedish advertising agency, the website takes a creative SEO-focused approach to promoting some of IKEA’s products.

A trip to IKEA can be a great test of any relationship and according to Allan Dickner, IKEA’s deputy manager of packaging, the company even has a special name for products that are difficult to assemble; ‘the husband killer’ (Fortune 2015). With the “Retail Therapy” advertising campaign, IKEA now wants to use its products to help solve its customer’s relationship problems – or at least put a smile on their faces.

The Swedish advertising agency looked at common Google search queries related to relationship problems in Sweden and IKEA then changed the names of their products to match frequently googled relationship problems. The Retail Therapy website then beautifully paired each relationship problem with the product that hopefully provides the solution.

For instance:

• A google search on “My Partner Snores” would show a daybed for one. • A frying pan was named “How to Stay Married” • The “Ate too many Swedish meatballs” bike.

IKEA gave catchy, SEO-friendly names to more than 100 products on the Retail Therapy website, which looked similar to the IKEA website. The Retail Therapy website then linked through to the IKEA website allowing consumers to purchase the product through an easy, seamless purchase consumer journey.

The campaign generated a lot of buzz online and was mentioned in multiple international news media as well as being shared on several social media platforms. Towards the end of the video it concludes that, "Whether it's a snoring husband, a never-ending gaming son or any other relationship problem you have, IKEA can come to the rescue … or at least put a smile on your face while you keep Googling for an answer." Many consumers found the campaign amusing and shared links to the “Retail Therapy” products on their social media platforms.

Whether the Retail Therapy campaign and website helped IKEA drive sales is still to be seen but nevertheless, the campaign serve as a great example on how a creative and innovative SEO strategy can help your organisation drive traffic to your website as well as gain visibility and increase awareness. Thinking as a consumer and using consumer language is key. Most organisations do pay close attention to product names and product descriptions as part of their SEO strategy, but the IKEA campaign highlights that there may be interesting opportunities for marketers to think about the problems their products solve when developing product names instead of simply describing the product itself.

At last, it’s worth mentioning the risk of using too broad search terms. For example, if your company is selling “organic chicken stock cubes”, it’s not recommended to go after broad keywords like “chicken” or “organic chicken” as these are not specific keywords related to the products you are selling. You want to ensure that you can provide high quality content, that answer the questions people are searching for. With a humorous twist the “Retail Therapy” campaign ensured that the IKEA products matched the search queries in an unexpected way which ensured that the campaign was not just regarded as irrelevant content although the products were not necessarily what the consumers were looking. This means that relevance – but even more so humour - played a crucial role in the campaign’s success.

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Ikea Admits It's Only Second Best in Sweet Campaign Celebrating the Parent-Child Bond

The ads show furniture going unused while parents focus on spending time with their kids.

#SMW is right around the corner. Join us April 9-11 in NYC to get up to speed on all the latest strategies, technologies and trends you need to be following. Register now .

Ikea is known for affordable and practical furniture, but in a new ad campaign, its products sit unused. The sweet spots, titled “Proudly the Second Best,” show off the brand’s solutions for new parents while acknowledging there’s no place a young child would rather be than with their family.

Each of the three ads showcases one of Ikea’s bestselling products—the Antilop highchair, Bolmen step stool and Smagora crib—along with its price. But the pictures zoom out to show the items aren’t being used, because the child is instead sitting on their dad’s lap while being fed, being held up to the sink to learn how to brush their teeth or dozing on their mom’s chest.

“Humility is a value that lives in the heart of our brand,” Carla Klumpenaar, Al-Futtaim Ikea general manager of marketing, communication, HF and retail design in the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Oman, said in a statement.

“Placing parents as the first choice for their children reflects this core belief. It doesn’t matter if we are second only to the parents; we are actually proud of it. Through this campaign, we hope to spread this brand value and celebrate parenthood across several channels.”

The campaign was created by agencies David Madrid and Ingo Hamburg.

“I remember the first time the creative team presented the idea to me and the impact it had,” Saulo Rocha, chief creative officer of David Madrid, told Adweek. “Me and my wife were some months into expecting our first child, and it just felt like an amazing sneak peek into what we were about to live in the near future.

“It’s subtle, it’s heartwarming, it’s humble and it’s honest,” he added. “And its strength comes from connecting with such a human part of us, it doesn’t matter whether you’re a parent or not.”

Since launching last week, the heartwarming effort has earned praise across Twitter and LinkedIn .

“We still don’t have the consolidated metrics around how well it is doing, but the overall reaction we’re seeing is more than what we expected, and the level of love it’s getting does tell us we’re in a great place,” Rocha said.

Ikea Sees Opportunity for Physical and Digital Growth After the Pandemic

Agencies: David Madrid, Ingo Hamburg Global chief creative officer: Pancho Cassis, Tobias Ahrens Global COO: Sylvia Panico Chief creative officer: Saulo Rocha Group creative director: David Krueger Creative director: Tomas O’Gorman Senior copywriter: Ricky Solano, Fernando Montero Senior art director: Gonzalo Arica, Nicolás Lopez Head of accounts: Maria Garcia Herranz Global account director: Annie Muñoz González Head of strategy: Daniela Bombonato Global PR director: Sandra Azedo Client approval: Carla Klumpenaar, Salama Ahmed, Dina al Sahhar, Oman Binita Roychowdhury Production company: Sal Gorda Realizador: Michelle Cassis Photography director: Andy Pulido Executive producer: Juanjo Goìmez Producer: Noelia Lobo Production director: Rubeìn Subirats Art Director: Baìrbara Gil y Miguel Junquera Estilismo: Paola Boch Post production: Full Fiction Color: GradePunk Sound: The Lobby Photography: Alberto Escudero, Oscar Calleja, Ricardo Moreira

Samantha Nelson

Samantha Nelson is a freelance writer for Adweek.

Ikea Branding Strategy and Marketing Case Study

Analysis and examples of ikea’s identity, positioning, key messages, tone of voice, brand archetypes, customer benefits, competitors, and marketing content..

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Brand Overview

• Home and Garden

Business Type

Physical Products

https://www.ikea.com

Target Customer

Budget Home Shoppers

Primary Need ( Job To Be Done )

Furnish my home with goods that are fashionable but affordable

Brand Visual Identity & Content

Primary brand colors, brand typefaces, hero content.

Hero Content Type

Content features people, brand messaging, key messages, benefit or feature focus, tone of voice, brand archetypes.

( Learn More About Brand Archetypes )

Everyperson

Brand Positioning Strategy ( Elements of Value )

( Learn More About The Elements of Value )

Aspirational

Self-Actualization

Design & Aesthetics

Reduces Cost

Brand Benefits

Ability to furnish everything I need in my home at one single shopping location 

Access to modern and trendy design aesthetics at extremely affordable pricepoints

Consistent, well thought out assembly instructions to get new furniture ready to use quickly

Competition

Key competitors.

Target, Wayfair, Amazon, Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ashley Furniture, Cost Plus World Market, Floyd

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Get a 10 page workbook on Purpose, Vision, and Values. Plus resources for Archetypes, Tone, Messaging, and more.

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IKEA: A Case Study on the impact of AR and VR on Marketing

AR and VR are two rapidly-growing technologies that are currently having a significant impact on a number of industries. In recent years, the growth rate of both AR and VR has been exponential, with AR and VR market sizes expected to increase by USD 162.71 billion from 2020 to 2025.

This growth is being driven by a number of factors, including:

• The increasing affordability of AR and VR devices
• The expanding range of application for these technologies
• Increasing investment from both the public and private sectors.

IKEA has been at the forefront of exploring the potential of these technologies, and this case study will explore the impact that AR and VR have had on the furniture giant’s marketing strategy.

What are Definitive Digital Marketing Realities today?

There’s no doubt that digital marketing is constantly evolving. With new technologies and platforms emerging all the time, it can be hard to keep up with the latest trends and know what really works. In this section, we’ll take a look at two technologies that are tipped to play a big role in digital marketing in the near future: Augmented reality (AR) and Virtual reality (VR).

Virtual Reality

VR is a digital reality that has been created through the use of computer technology. It is a three-dimensional, interactive environment where users can experience and explore virtual worlds. VR has been used for a variety of purposes, including education, training, and entertainment. In recent years, it has emerged as a powerful tool for marketing and advertising.

With VR, businesses can transport their customers to imaginary worlds where they can interact with products and services in a completely immersive way. This provides a unique and unforgettable experience that can help businesses to stand out from the competition. This technology is still in its infancy, but is already proving to be a powerful force in the world of marketing and advertising.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) is a technology that superimposes computer-generated images on a user’s view of the real world, thus providing a composite view. A well-known implementation of AR is in social media image filters, popularized by platforms like Snapchat and Instagram. Currently, the most common use of AR is in video games, where it enhances the player’s experience by providing greater immersion.

However, AR has a wide range of other potential applications. For example, it could be used to provide information about products in a store or to give directions to drivers. It could also be used in education, for example, to provide interactive 3D diagrams of scientific concepts.

AR has been at the forefront of digital marketing since its inception. However, it was only recently that the technology gained mainstream adoption. Thanks to mobile devices and apps like Snapchat and Instagram, AR is now more accessible than ever before – and businesses are beginning to take notice. From interactive experiences to enhanced product visuals, AR offers a wide range of benefits for marketers. Perhaps most importantly, it allows brands to create truly unique and memorable experiences for their customers.

Impact of AR and VR on marketing

Extending the customer experience.

Marketers now have the opportunity to provide deeper context for their customer experiences through virtual engagements. VR allows marketers to create virtual environments and experiences for their brand that enhance the customer experience. These experiences are accessible via web or app, allowing customers to interact without the need for VR headsets.

The use of AR (versus a website) for creative purchase decisions sequentially increases customer engagement, customer creativity, and anticipated satisfaction.

AR is the most widely used immersive technology, allowing more flexibility in improving customer experience. Imagine being able to try on different clothes or cosmetics virtually before you buy them. Virtual try-ons and product visualizations are all about the customer, giving them the chance to create their brand story.

Shopping Experiences that are entirely different

71% of shoppers prefer to go to stores with a “try-it-before-you-buy” AR experience. Retailers should be committed to making shopping more enjoyable before customers ever step foot in a store.

Retailers can offer interactive experiences for customers who manage to make it into the store to increase brand awareness and product engagement. For example, a virtual fitting room will enable customers to visualize themselves in various apparel options. This helps them narrow down their choices before they actually try them on. This can result in a significant increase in sales conversions and drastically decreased returns.

AR shopping experiences are rare. They can be used in-store and at home, allowing customers to understand a brand or product better. Marketers need to reconsider shopping online using Augmented Product Visualization. Intelligent closets, software-predicted product details, and systems that automatically detect colours, and materials, are all part and parcel of the future of online shopping.

Social Media Acceptance

It should come as no surprise that immersive experiences have become deeply linked to almost every social media platform, thanks to the investment of Facebook in AR filters and lenses. Although AR is not a term everyone has heard of, most people have used it. Using codeless AR, open-source AR toolkits (SDK), and WebAR makes it easier to create and use virtual interactions on social media.

70%-75% of those aged 16-44 are informed about AR . This is your target audience. AR brand promotion can be used effectively on social media to influence trends, increase impulse purchases, and boost brand engagement.

Employee Engagement and Training

Some companies are using AR and VR to train and recruit their employees.These technologies can be used in the same manner by marketing teams. The virtual environment can be used to connect people with immersive experiences that include visualization, gamification, and other techniques. Marketing teams can create interactive, highly customizable content for their team members to help them improve their knowledge and implement immersive interactions for clients.

In manufacturing, VR can be used to evaluate potential employees in different areas of a virtual line. This allows them to see how they react to the environment.

IKEA Case Study

The services offered by furniture retailing giant, IKEA, are one example of how companies could benefit from such technological innovation.

IKEA, the largest furniture retailer in the world since 2008, is one of the major players in the RTA (Ready to Assemble) furniture market. IKEA is a multinational European company that designs and sells RTA furniture, kitchen appliances, and accessories.

IKEA has always been at the forefront of innovating to meet the needs of its customers. In recent years, this has included developing new technologies to make shopping more convenient and engaging.

One example is the Ikea Immerse VR app , which allows users to virtually tour an Ikea store and see how furniture would look in their homes. The app also includes product information and pricing, allowing users to make their decision without having to wander through the entire IKEA store.

Another example is the VR store tours that Ikea offers in various locations around Australia. These tours give shoppers an immersive experience of what it would be like to shop at an Ikea store, without having to leave their homes.

Recently, Ikea has taken things one step further with the launch of its VR Kitchen Visualizer. This new tool allows customers to design their dream kitchen in VR, using a variety of different Ikea products. The Ikea VR Kitchen Visualizer is currently available in select stores in Australia and will be rolled out to more countries in the near future.

With the VR Kitchen Visualizer, customers can choose from a variety of different kitchen layouts, colours, and styles. They can also add or remove appliances and cabinets, and see how each change affects the overall look of the room. Once they’re happy with their design, they can save it and share it with friends and family.

The IKEA Place App

IKEA Place launched its AR app in September 2017. It aimed to address practical issues surrounding furniture shopping. With this app, customers could now test furniture in their own homes using this free app. AR would be used to let users visualize furniture in their homes. It would take away the stress of furniture shopping and also remove the need to return any furniture that is not suitable. 

IKEA’s free app creates a service-centred benefit. It shows that it is sensitive to the difficulties involved in furniture shopping and offers support.

With the help of AR technology, the app allows furniture shoppers to virtually furnish their homes with over 2,000 accessories and objects from IKEA.

With just their phones and the app, users can superimpose virtual replicas of IKEA furniture in their homes to give them a better idea of how the furniture will look once it is placed in its intended location. Simply take a picture of the space you want to furnish, then select the desired IKEA item. With 98% accuracy, the app automatically scales the product to the right size for the space. The app also allows you to view the fabric’s texture and render light and shadows.

The Place App was one of the first to take advantage of the ARKit, which Apple offered as an AR framework. The ARKit was later matched with Android and used the iPhone’s motion sensors, cameras, and microphones to overlay digital elements in real life.

The updated version of the Place app has new features that enhance the AR services further. The previous versions of the Place app allowed you to experiment with only one piece of virtual IKEA furniture in a real-life setting. It was not possible to use IKEA furniture to furnish a whole room but now, the Place app’s latest version allows users to furnish a room using a multi-placement option virtually. Users can also create a wishlist to save items for future purchases.

The IKEA Place app’s impact

The IKEA Place app is currently the world-leading mixed reality mobile app.

Entertainment apps such as Snapchat Lenses or Pokemon Go are often the AR applications that receive more attention, but the Place app is one of the most widely used non-gaming apps.

The app has revolutionized the digital retail experience as a whole.

The AR app received positive reviews, and the service it offered generated a lot of marketing attention. The company received substantial press media coverage for making the list of the top 50 most innovative companies , and Google searches for “IKEA AR” spiked in its introduction period.

The app positioned IKEA as a trailblazer and early adopter of technology to the service industry. It maintains its reputation as a pioneer of augmented reality experiences in retail to this day.

The Takeaway

Marketers who embrace augmented reality and use it as an innovative tool to connect with consumers are in a great position.

AR engagement has increased by nearly 20% since 2020 , and conversion rates have risen by 90% for users who engage with AR compared to those who don’t. It is clear that immersive marketing is the future of Marketing. Is your brand poised to embrace it?

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Case Study | IKEA “Glocal” Marketing Strategy In China

Case Study | IKEA “Glocal” Marketing Strategy In China 5 min read

It is well known that for the past few decades, companies have been trying to design an effective marketing strategy for the global market while also catering to local needs and demands. This sort of strategy is called “ Globally local ” or “ Glocal ”.  Thus companies take into consideration of local cultural, social, economic and linguistic factors while marketing their products and services. 

IKEA, a multinational group of Swedish companies headquartered in Delft, Netherlands, designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances and home accessories. IKEA’s mission of “ delivering low prices and high-quality furnishing solutions to the many ” made it a significant player in US and European markets. In order to provide customers with the greatest value for money, IKEA’s furniture is designed to be self-assembled by end-users. This solution allows IKEA to reduce both manufacturing and transportation costs and give customers the lowest possible price.

IKEA turned its attention to China in the late 90s when the Chinese market was booming with growing middle-class. Although it represented a huge opportunity for IKEA, it also came with a difficulty as in the Chinese market shows significant cultural and demographic differences embedded in its strong millennial cultural heritage.  IKEA entered China in 1998 with its first store in Shanghai and soon after another store in Beijing in 1999. Cities like Guangzhou, Shanghai, and Beijing were traditionally considered to be the top target markets in China for high-end products because of their heavy concentration of middle-class consumers. The growth of the furniture market in China was expected to continue over the next years.

The IKEA concept has evolved over more than 40 years as a result of a growth process based on continuous innovation and a strong and well defined corporate culture. It always remained faithful to its mission. IKEA founder Kamprad’s view was clear: “We shall always be one IKEA, one business idea and one culture”. Gradually it became a strong and tested brand and it adopted some minor local adjustment in its marketing strategy”

IKEA entered the Chinese market with a similar strategy with some minor adjustments in the store’s location. In fact, as most Chinese consumers do not have access to cars, IKEA stores in China are located closer to city centers.

The main challenge IKEA faced in the Chinese market was implementing an effective pricing strategy.

• Low prices are the cornerstone of IKEA’s vision and its business concept. However, IKEA’s prices were not considered low by the middle-class Chinese customers.
• The upper class was more inclined to buy foreign products as a symbol of status and not for their functionality.
• As a Chinese saying goes “high-quality goods are not cheap, and the cheap goods are not high quality” suggesting that Chinese consumers’ view, low prices are often associated with low quality.
• The cultural aspect caused resistance to IKEA products mainly among older generations
• Also, local producers were selling furniture of similar quality at much cheaper prices: almost half and import tariffs on IKEA made it difficult to lower prices.

Reducing prices was seen as the only possible solution for IKEA but on deeper introspection; IKEA’s poor performance was due to its lack of understanding of Chinese customers buying patterns and preferences .

• IKEA considered the overall middle class a homogenous segment, without paying attention to different sub-groups, in particular in terms of age and it prevented IKEA from identifying customers’ specific needs and implementing effective marketing strategies. 
• IKEA had an unfocused position in the market and thus IKEA needed to determine the target group and overall position in the market. 
• IKEA was perceived more as an aspirational brand, symbol of innovation, and western lifestyles. Younger customers were appealed by IKEA but could not make a purchase

At this stage, it was clear that IKEA needed urgently to change its positioning strategy and revise its pricing accordingly if it were to become profitable in China.

Options available to IKEA

• Maintaining the position of best quality provider, trying to reduce price and became affordable to all.
• Maintaining a position of higher quality and higher pricing product targeting the higher class

The first step taken by IKEA in implementing its reviewed strategy was reducing prices for its target group. Since 2000, IKEA has cut its prices by more than 60 %. One example is the price of its “Lack” table that has dropped to 39 Yuan from 120 Yuan when IKEA first came to the Chinese Market. 

• IKEA decided not to give up its traditional concept of simplicity, functionality and low prices. It targeted the youngest members of the middle-class who were considered impulsive, easy to influence, very social, and committed to leading foreign consumer brands”
• IKEA China marketing promoted its home decoration values, including ‘make good use of your space’, ‘simple is beautiful’, and ‘save money by doing it yourself’ in an attempt to re-educate the youngest consumers to IKEA concept.
• IKEA’s main target group is middle-class people aged 25–35. IKEA’s customers are generally better educated, earn higher incomes, travel more than the average. Women represented 65% of the customers.
• IKEA increasingly used social media sites to spread the company’s value. IKEA decorated inside of elevators in 20 lower-income apartment buildings in Beijing to show residents how IKEA can make their small apartments modern and pleasant without spending much money.
• The company encouraged people to come and visit their store for IKEA experience.

After years of struggling in China, IKEA was finally able to generate a profit for the first time in 2012. It was due to their glocal strategy that IKEA was able to achieve this feat.

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IKEA builds local market coverage with targeted UGC

Case Studies · Home & Office · Retail

The Challenge

IKEA, the world’s largest furniture retailer, produces over 200,000 content assets globally through their in-house production agency, but needed a cost-efficient way to source content, at scale, and is market relevant at a regional level.

The Solution

IKEA partnered with Social Native to source organic content shared by their customers and connect it to their product range to provide a seamless shopping experience. IKEA has created a strong community on social called “IKEA At Mine” which calls for customers to share images of their IKEA products in their home.

User-generated content works across all aspects of the customer journey – all the way from inspiration down to filtering to actually deciding to buy. The main benefit is being able to connect our product range to UGC to provide a seamless and fluid shopping experience, so [customers] move down the funnel more naturally and easily.

Jason Black, Web Communications Manager, UK & Ireland at IKEA

The Results

When using user-generated content on social media, IKEA saw a 27% higher reach than with owned organic imagery. IKEA also achieved a 2.7x higher engagement with UGC on their homepage and a 3.54x higher conversion rate when a user interacted with UGC. Eight out of ten of their top-performing organic posts on social were sourced from UGC.

Higher reach on social platforms

Higher conversion rate with UGC

Higher engagement with UGC

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Gaming matures as case studies headline iab playfronts 2024.

This year, gaming companies’ pitches to media buyers were backed with quantitative results.

Media buyers who attended the third annual IAB PlayFronts this week were met with a familiar pitch from gaming companies looking to sway them on the power of video game advertising. 

Presenters once again boasted about how much time players spend in games compared to the average social media user scrolling short-form video feeds, while lamenting the discrepancy in spend on gaming platforms.

For example, Digital Turbine spoke on Tuesday about its  mobile gaming study  released in February which states that games account for 10.6% of time spent on mobile phones, but only capture 3.9% of total ad spending.

Speakers have highlighted this disparity since the first PlayFronts in 2022. However, this year, veterans of the event were pleasantly surprised to see these familiar arguments backed by case studies and campaign results pointing to the quantitative, measurable impact of in-game advertising.

Brands such as Bomb Pop tied gaming success back to product sales — a correlation  companies have struggled  to make for years without a wide array of measurement techniques, even on platforms with more mature ad offerings, such as Roblox.

On Wednesday, Max Bass, director of emerging connections at GALE, spoke to a panel about how the agency’s gaming partner,  Moonrock Labs , was able to provide Bomb Pop with detailed performance metrics.

In its game on Roblox’s  Restaurant Tycoon 2,  launched last summer, Bomb Pop tracked how long players were exposed to its logo, which was placed throughout the game, for less than one second, between one and two seconds and for five or more seconds. That granularity, combined with players spending an average of 28 minutes in-game, allowed Bomb Pomp to tie its in-game exposure to a 28% uptick in sales over the summer.

Other panels followed suit: Zynga shared that 92% of its players agree to watch rewarded ads; Anzu stated that in-game ads are  5% better  at driving purchase consideration than the online media average; Samsung Ads found that 40% of respondents to a  survey  are open to services that show ads to offset the cost of games. 

Even the IAB backed this focus on metrics up with a  new study  emphasizing the importance of measurement in gaming.

“So many people have different case studies that they’re presenting across pretty much every advertiser category, and they’re all using different research vendors, but a lot of what they’re saying is the same thing,” said Gabrielle Heyman, head of global brand partnerships at Zynga. “There’s a consistent theme across games…they make people feel good and they’re more receptive to ads than you might think.”

For agencies, this year’s PlayFronts was an unveiling of work years in the making.

“Measurement is the thing that’s been going on behind the scenes, so it’s great to be able to come out and talk about it with everyone who is like-minded and working on the same things,” GALE’s Bass said.

He added that GALE has partnered with Nielsen to further legitimize the insights it's pulling from Bomb Pop’s Roblox game.

“It’s the language of CPM, efficiency, results and guarantees,” he said. “Gaming hasn’t always been able to come to the table with the same kind of expectation setting that other digital platforms have.”

For media buyers, this year’s PlayFronts marked a turning point for the industry, which has historically struggled to prove a return on investment.

“On really big brands…it takes a long time to change minds,” said Pete Basgen, global gaming and esports lead at Wavemaker. “But with better measurability, everything is becoming more viable and feeling more real, like we have more parity with traditional digital media opportunities. Inevitably, that’s going to make budgets shift into our space.”

Ad giants are taking notice of a maturing gaming industry. Google AdMob recently  announced  that it will begin serving in-game ads.

Still, despite progress, brands’ investment in gaming overall will grow gradually. As Basgen said, “Big boats turn real slowly.”

He added that this year’s focus on in-game advertising and measurement left gaming creators somewhat overshadowed.

Other attendees stated that they would like to see more talk of creators next year, as well as a broadening of the term.

“I don’t think we’re talking about creators enough,” said Ricardo Briceno, chief business officer at Gamefam. “When you go to gaming platforms like Roblox and  Fortnite , those are full of creators too, just not the kind you see in front of the camera. They’re creating immersive content, and that’s critical because those are games that have giant audiences.”

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Abortions outside medical system increased sharply after Roe fell, study finds

Researchers report that volunteer-led networks distributing abortion pills helped drive a rise in ‘self-managed’ abortions.

The number of women using abortion pills to end their pregnancies on their own without the direct involvement of a U.S.-based medical provider rose sharply in the months after the Supreme Court eliminated a constitutional right to abortion, according to the most comprehensive examination to date of how many people have ended their pregnancies outside of the formal medical system since the ruling.

Nearly 28,000 additional doses of pills intended for “self-managed” abortions were provided in the six months after the fall of Roe v. Wade — more than quadrupling the average number of abortion pills provided that way per month before the decision and suggesting that many women have turned to medication abortion to circumvent state bans.

The research — published in JAMA on Monday , the day before the highly anticipated Supreme Court arguments on a challenge to a key abortion drug — highlights the importance of abortion pills in post- Roe America. Before the ruling legalized abortion nationwide in 1973, women seeking abortions were forced to find someone to perform an illegal surgical procedure, leading to thousands of deaths . Today, the process for accessing abortion is far easier and safer, with a rapidly expanding online and community-based network of pill suppliers sending pills through the mail into states with strict bans.

Other studies have estimated that approximately 32,000 fewer abortions occurred at licensed brick-and-mortar and telehealth clinics in the six months following the fall of Roe . But the jump in self-managed abortions offsets nearly that whole figure.

Supply of abortion pills for

self-managed abortions

The supply of abortion pills outside of the formal health-care setting increased sharply in the six months after Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , a landmark ruling that eliminated the constitutional right to abortion. A major factor in the increase was the rise of community-based, volunteer-led networks that organized to help women in states with abortion bans.

Online vendors

Telemedicine

Community networks

Source: Provision of Medications for Self-managed Abortion

Before and After the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health

Organization decision. JAMA (2024)

Source: Provision of Medications for Self-managed Abortion Before and After

the Dobbs v Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision. JAMA (2024)

Supply of abortion pills for self-managed abortions

“The numbers we’re looking at seem to suggest that [self-managed abortion] is more mainstream than perhaps we thought,” said Abigail Aiken, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin and the lead author of the study. “This is something people are doing on a larger scale.”

Women in states with bans are also using the traditional health-care system to access abortion, traveling out of state to pick up pills or to have a procedure at a clinic in a state where abortion remains legal. A different study published last week by the Guttmacher Institute, which supports abortion rights, revealed that the overall number of abortions facilitated within the formal health-care system increased last year despite the bans, with medication abortions accounting for 63 percent of the more than 1 million abortions performed in 2023.

Taken together, the flurry of new data points to a perhaps surprising result of the fall of Roe : While the ruling has made abortion more difficult to access for people in antiabortion states, a large portion of those women have been able to navigate around the laws and end their pregnancies.

Self-managed abortions with pills are facilitated in a legal gray area. Women obtaining abortions by mail are not breaking the law themselves; abortion bans are designed to penalize only doctors and others involved in facilitating an abortion. Those involved with distributing the pills could potentially be charged. In many states, abortion bans carry penalties of at least several years in prison.

The landscape of self-managed abortion is sprawling and difficult to quantify, Aiken said. According to Plan C, an abortion rights organization that tests pills and publishes a list of verified sources online, at least 25 websites now mail abortion medication into states that ban the procedure, along with several telehealth clinics and community-based networks.

Aiken identified 15 distinct sources for abortion pills that were operating outside of the formal health-care setting in the first six months after Roe fell, most of which shared with the researchers month-by-month data on the number of pills they distributed to U.S. patients during that period. Some sources relayed the numbers without providing internal documentation, Aiken said, because they do not keep formal records.

Rebecca Gomperts, the founder of Aid Access, the largest telehealth clinic mailing pills into states with abortion bans, and Elisa Wells, a founder of Plan C, are co-authors of the study.

The various sources that mail pills for self-managed abortions operate with very different models, offering a range of medical and emotional support through the process of passing a pregnancy at home, according to the new study.

In the first six months after the Supreme Court decision, the JAMA study shows that most women who chose to self-manage their abortions obtained pills through networks of volunteers that quickly mobilized and expanded after the ruling. These networks — one of the largest of which is based in Mexico — buy pills from international pharmacies, then mail them to people for free without a prescription, offering peer support but typically no direct access to a doctor. The pills often arrive unsealed, according to Plan C.

Along with community-based networks, people are also obtaining pills through internationally based telehealth clinics, which provide a prescription from a doctor, or other websites that sell pills typically without offering any kind of built-in support for women taking them.

Abortion pills have become even easier to get since the immediate aftermath of Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization , with new suppliers appearing regularly and existing suppliers expanding to absorb more demand.

In the year since the research in the study was compiled, Aiken said, telehealth clinics in particular have significantly expanded their reach in antiabortion states, leading to far more abortions provided than are reflected in her study. While Europe-based Aid Access, the largest of these groups, initially relied on pharmacies in India to mail pills to patients in states with bans, the organization has now started allowing U.S.-based doctors to prescribe and mail the pills themselves, making use of “shield laws” recently passed in several Democratic-led states to protect the providers from prosecution. That change has reduced Aid Access’s shipping time from several weeks to a few days.

The organization now mails approximately 6,000 doses of medication abortion into states with abortion bans each month, according to Gomperts. She expects that number will continue to grow.

“What we know from other countries is the more this [becomes] mainstreamed, the more people will feel comfortable doing it by themselves,” she said.

Struggling to come up with a way to crack down on self-managed abortions, antiabortion advocates have taken aim at abortion pills more broadly. At Tuesday’s Supreme Court arguments, antiabortion advocates will argue that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration rushed its 2000 approval of mifepristone, the first drug in the two-step medication abortion regimen, as well as subsequent decisions to lift restrictions on the pill. Perhaps most significantly, antiabortion advocates are seeking to reinstate the requirement for people taking medication abortion to see a medical provider in person — a change that could halt the mailing of abortion pills.

“When the FDA is recklessly saying that this is safe and women don’t need or deserve ongoing care — that’s dangerous,” Christina Francis, chief executive of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, said in an interview last month.

Leading studies show that medication abortions conducted via telehealth are safe. Major adverse events, such as infections or a hemorrhage, occur in less than 1 percent of cases, a figure that remains the same whether or not a patient has an ultrasound and an in-person consultation.

The upcoming Supreme Court case could have significant implications for people taking abortion pills in states with bans, potentially preventing U.S. providers from utilizing shield laws.

Abortion rights leaders say they will continue to mail pills into antiabortion states, regardless of whether it’s legal.

“The reality is that medication abortion and telemedicine will continue — but whether it continues from licensed providers, aboveboard, without stigma … is something we have to really be aware of and fighting for,” said Julie Kay, the executive director of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine, an abortion rights group.

U.S. abortion access, reproductive rights

Tracking abortion access in the United States: Since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade , the legality of abortion has been left to individual states. The Washington Post is tracking states where abortion is legal, banned or under threat.

Abortion pills: The Supreme Court seemed unlikely to limit access to the abortion pill mifepristone . Here’s what’s at stake in the case and some key moments from oral arguments . For now, full access to mifepristone will remain in place . Here’s how mifepristone is used and where you can legally access the abortion pill .

New study: The number of women using abortion pills to end their pregnancies on their own without the direct involvement of a U.S.-based medical provider rose sharply in the months after the Supreme Court eliminated a constitutional right to abortion , according to new research.

Abortion and the 2024 election: Voters in a dozen states in 2024 could decide the fate of abortion rights with constitutional amendments on the ballot in a pivotal election year. The Biden administration announced new steps intended to ensure access to contraception, abortion medication and emergency abortions at hospitals. Here’s what the moves on reproductive health mean for consumers. See where the 2024 presidential candidates stand on abortion bans .

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• 5 key moments from Supreme Court arguments on the abortion pill case March 26, 2024 5 key moments from Supreme Court arguments on the abortion pill case March 26, 2024