10 Ways IKEA Inspires You Into Buying More Furniture
IKEA, the Swedish furniture giant, correctly pronounced E-KEY-AH, has become a household name and a go-to destination for affordable and stylish furniture worldwide. As you wander through their sprawling stores, you may have noticed how effortlessly you end up with more items in your cart than you initially intended to purchase. In this blog post, we will delve into the art of how IKEA skillfully tricks customers into buying more furniture. By understanding the psychology behind their tactics, you can become a more informed category manager, retailer or entrepreneur and perhaps use some of these ideas yourself on your site or stores.
1 - The Psychology Behind IKEA's Store Layout
Step foot into any IKEA store, and you'll quickly realize that it's no ordinary furniture showroom. The carefully crafted layout guides customers along a winding maze-like path, leading them through various departments and enticing them to explore every nook and cranny. There are no isles at Ikea and users never see the end of a walk way, as soon as you think you have reached the end of an isle, the isle turns and you are introduced to a new section of the showroom.
This one-way floor plan is designed like a maze to get the shoppers exposed to the entire product range. The more you walk the more you see, the higher the likelihood of purchase. By meticulously planning the store's layout, IKEA ensures that customers come across an array of furniture pieces and home accessories, increasing the chances of finding something that catches their eye.
The use of the Gruen effect is evident when studying IKEA’s layouts. The showrooms are carefully designed to create an immersive and stimulating atmosphere. The use of bright lights, vibrant colors, and captivating sounds creates a sense of excitement and energy. The absence of clocks and windows further disorients shoppers, making it easy for them to lose track of time and stay engaged in the shopping experience.
IKEA USA’s creative director once said, ”20% of our buying decisions are based on logic and needs. 80%… are actually based on emotions.”
2 - The Pull of Affordable Pricing
One of the cornerstones of IKEA's success lies in its ability to offer affordable furniture without compromising on style. The perception of value for money plays a significant role in enticing customers to buy more. IKEA has perfected the art of delivering reasonably priced furniture that mimics the latest trends and designs. By offering stylish products at a fraction of the cost compared to high-end retailers, they tap into the desire for budget-friendly solutions while still allowing customers to have aesthetically pleasing homes.
When you enter an IKEA store you are greeted by breathtakingly low prices in bright yellow banners, which is meant to get the customer to impulse buy and add items to their shopping cart. IKEA knows that once the user puts something in to their cart they are more likely to continue shopping.
Another tactic IKEA uses is the spillover effect. When you are greeted by low prices at the onset of your shopping experience that price perception spills over on to the entire product range nudging users to impulse buy more products even though the price might have not changed much.
3 - The force of Impulse Buys
As you approach the checkout area, you encounter the IKEA Marketplace—the treasure trove of smaller home decor items, kitchen gadgets, and accessories. These irresistible temptations lure customers into making impulse purchases. From scented candles and picture frames to quirky kitchen utensils and plush pillows, these pocket-friendly items conveniently grab your attention just when you thought your shopping spree was complete. The lower price point and perception of added value make it easy to justify these spontaneous additions to your cart.
One such example is that IKEA sells dirt cheap candles (On which they loose money) right next to the candle holders. The idea here is that the shopper will be enticed to buy the cheap candles, but will then consider where those candles will live in their homes and then impulse buy the fancy candle holders on which IKEA makes a 60% profit margin. IKEA is leveraging the Halo effect here to trigger impulse buy behaviors.
4 - The Power of Assembled Displays a.k.a Room Sets
One of IKEA's most influential tactics is its use of fully assembled displays throughout the store. These displays showcase their furniture in real-life settings, helping customers visualize how the pieces would look and function in their own homes. By creating these immersive experiences, IKEA instills a sense of desire and aspiration. Customers are more likely to add items to their shopping carts after seeing the products in a realistic context, believing that they, too, can achieve the same level of style and functionality.
The IKEA Room set sales method was invented in the 50’s by IKEA’s founder Ingvar Kamprad. Well decorated and light room sets, get the user inspired for what their homes might look like if they had those items, without having to hire and pay an interior designer. IKEA also nudges users to buy everything they see in a Room Set if they want their house to have the assembled displays aesthetics.
5 - Feed the Customer
A hungry customer is a bad customer and Ingvar Kamprad knew this. The IKEA maze take a long time to walk through. In fact it take about 2 hours for an average shopper to walk the entirety of the showroom. IKEA takes another page out of the Casino Effect play book, offering complimentary amenities such as drinks, meals, and seating space to keep shoppers comfortable and entertained. These perks create a sense of reciprocity and make shoppers feel valued, encouraging them to continue shopping and exploring in return.
Remember the spillover effect from the The Pull of Affordable Pricing section above? Well according to an interview the Hustle did with Chris Spear, a former Ikea restaurant manager, who said that the food courts actually aren’t a very profitable venture in their own right and he was told that profit margin was not something he should be aiming for in the restaurant because the the real objective, he claims, is to reinforce Ikea’s low price profile of the store.
Spear also said in that interview that when he worked at Ikea, they had a policy that some food items, like hot dogs, had to be the lowest price within a 30-mile radius.
IKEA is the 6th biggest food retailer in the world and sells about 1 billion Swedish meatballs annually.
6 - The Power of Smell
Ikea know the power of smell and its ability to evoke strong memories in it shoppers. The use of smell to evoke memory and recall is called Olfactory branding, also sometimes known as scent marketing or aroma marketing, is a strategic approach used by businesses to create a unique and memorable sensory experience by incorporating specific scents into their brand identity and spaces. This marketing technique leverages the powerful connection between scent and emotions, aiming to enhance customer perceptions, influence behavior, and create a lasting brand impression or pull towards products.
IKEA has been know to pump food smells in to their kitchen display room sets to evoke memories in their shoppers. Imagine walking into a kitchen display and getting hit with the sweet smell of freshly baked cookies or a home made pizza, you can almost taste it, now doesn’t that make you want to hold on to that feeling?
7 - Flat Pack Furniture & The Love of Creation
Ikea’s founder once saw a customer struggling to fit a coffee table (image below) in the back of his boot, and thought to himself “What if I disassemble, the coffee table for the customer to transport it easily and give him the instructions to reassemble it at his house?”
This was the birth of the now famous IKEA flat pack design philosophy.
Everything IKEA does is to manage costs, flat pack furniture significantly reduces manufacturing and transportation costs. By utilizing compact packaging, IKEA can optimize the use of space during transportation, resulting in reduced shipping expenses. This cost-saving strategy is reflected in the competitive pricing of IKEA products, making them more accessible to a wide range of customers.
The flat pack design empowers customers to participate in the furniture assembly process. While some may view furniture assembly as a daunting task, IKEA has successfully turned it into an enjoyable and satisfying experience. Opening that iconic flat pack box and embarking on the assembly journey can be seen as a fun and rewarding activity, fostering a sense of accomplishment and pride in creating something with one's own hands.
Which leads to the IKEA Effect. The phenomenon refers to the emotional attachment and perceived value individuals develop towards products they have actively contributed to creating it. When buyers invest time and effort in assembling IKEA furniture, they tend to place a higher value on the end result.
To leverage this effect, IKEA encourages customers to take an active role in the furniture assembly process. They do this by design by provide detailed pictorial instructions, user-friendly tools, and intuitive designs to make the process as accessible as possible.
LÖVET - The three-legged, leaf-shaped side table that sparked a revolution in self-assembly furniture over 67 years ago
8 - The Act of Traveling to Ikea
IKEA artfully leverages the sunk cost effect to drive sales by strategically locating its stores in areas that require considerable effort for customers to reach. Placing their stores far away from city centers, often near airports or industrial areas, makes the trip to an IKEA store feel like a significant event. The concept of the sunk cost effect comes into play as customers invest time and effort in traveling to the store, creating a psychological urge to justify their journey by making a purchase. The further the distance traveled, the stronger the desire to avoid the perception of a wasted effort, ultimately nudging customers to explore the store and potentially buy something.
Once customers arrive at an IKEA store, the strategically designed store layout amplifies the sunk cost effect. The sprawling and labyrinthine layout guides customers through a carefully curated journey, exposing them to a wide array of products and tempting displays. This intentional design ensures that customers invest more time and energy navigating the store, reinforcing the sunk cost effect and increasing the likelihood of making a purchase. By creating an immersive and engaging shopping experience that appeals to customers' emotions, IKEA skillfully capitalizes on the sunk cost effect to drive sales and encourage customers to bring home the innovative and affordable furniture solutions the brand is renowned for.
The faraway location also has another benefit for Ikea, since their stores are often near airports, industrial areas or public transport routes, the transportation of goods becomes cheaper as they have to travel short distances to reach the warehouse. Also being away from the city centre means that the price of renting or owning property is cheaper enabling Ikea to sell furniture at lower costs.
9 - Stackable Product Design
IKEA's strategy of designing stackable products is a clever approach to optimising transportation efficiency and reducing associated costs. By creating items that can be easily stacked together, IKEA maximizes the use of space in shipping containers, trucks, and warehouses. This not only lowers transportation expenses but also aligns with the brand's commitment to sustainability by reducing carbon emissions and minimizing the ecological footprint of its logistics operations.
The stackable design is particularly evident in many of IKEA's lightweight and compact items, such as chairs, stools, and storage bins. These products are crafted to fit snugly on top of one another, creating a stable and space-saving arrangement during transit. As a result, more units can be packed into a single container, leading to more cost-efficient shipping and distribution.
Ikea stretches this product design philosophy even to things that one might not think could be designed in a stackable manner. We all know that you can design chairs to be stacked but how about a watering can for the garden that can be stackable?
IKEA Watering Can PS2 is one such example. This product is specifically designed with a stackable shape, allowing multiple watering cans to be nested together efficiently.
10 - Heat maps & Prime locations
IKEA employs sophisticated tracking technologies to analyze customer behaviour inside their stores, enabling them to develop heatmaps and identify hotspots. These insights play a pivotal role in determining the optimal placement of objects and layouts, ultimately driving sales and enhancing the overall shopping experience.
One method IKEA uses to track users is through the use of eye-tracking technology. They deploy discreet cameras that monitor customers' eye movements as they navigate through the store. This data provides valuable insights into where users are likely to look and spend more time gazing. By identifying these hotspots, IKEA gains a deeper understanding of which areas within the store capture customers' attention the most, allowing them to strategically place high-demand products or attractive displays in these prime locations.
In conclusion, IKEA's flat-pack furniture design and cost philosophy revolutionized the industry by offering affordable and convenient solutions to customers worldwide. The love of creation, or the IKEA effect, plays a significant role in building strong emotional connections between customers and their IKEA furniture. By actively involving customers in the assembly process and allowing for personalization, IKEA has successfully tapped into the innate human desire for creativity, ownership, and pride in the products we bring into our homes.
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