Ikea Case study – Sandra

Overview

Ikea is much more than a furniture store. It is a highly-organized system that successfully draws customers in, makes them linger there, and induces them to purchase something, while also delivering an unbeatable customer experience. The experience is so enjoyable that customers often come back just for fun, whether it is to casually browse, hang out with a friend, bring the kids to play, or even go on a date. What are some of the underlying design decisions that create this Ikea experience?

What resources are being used?

Ikea organizes many different types of resources including furniture, household goods and appliances, and food. Resources are not unique because there are many duplicate copies of the same resource, which can take different forms in each instance. The furniture that the customer sees and interacts with in the “showroom” is only the display copy of that furniture; what they actually purchase is another instance that is disassembled and stored in the warehouse. Similarly, customers can buy and consume warm and prepared foods in the cafeteria (Swedish meatballs with gravy), or they can purchase the same type of food in a packaged form to bring home (frozen Swedish meatballs). Apart from organizing the resources for sale, Ikea also organizes information about those resources in the form of physical reference ID tags on the furniture and digital descriptions of each resource that is displayed on the website.

Why are the resources organized?

All of the resources are strategically organized in the building to enhance customer experience and incentivize customers to purchase their products. The store is laid out in a way that leads all customers through a path that passes through every showroom that is made to look like an actual bedroom, living room, kitchen, etc. This implicitly forces customers pass through and look at almost everything in the store. Usually along the way, certain products will appeal customers and cause them to stop and linger even if they had not planned to purchase anything in that section. After customers are tired and hungry from walking through all the showrooms, there is a strategically placed cafeteria in the middle that offers food and refreshments. At the end, when customers are done purchasing their items, there is a food stand right by the check-out selling hot dogs and ice cream cones. The store layout is intentionally designed to make customers linger, offer refreshments when they get hungry, purchase more items, and still go home happy with the experience.

Resources are also organized to enable certain sets of interactions. The display furniture are arranged to look like an actual bedroom or kitchen, etc, which allows customers critically observe a piece of furniture in its proper context, touch it, sit on it, and determine whether they want to purchase it or not. In this way, the showroom acts as a tangible interface that allows users to interact and access information about the furniture. Information about the resource is displayed on tags on each display furniture, and customers write down the exact reference ID of the item they are purchasing. This allows customers to find the same exact type of furniture later in the warehouse. Furniture in the warehouse is disassembled, packaged into flat boxes, and stacked on top of each other, because the overall goal here is to optimize storage space and facilitate transportation. Besides reference IDs on all the boxes, resource descriptions on the boxes include a helpful sketch of the furniture and the color, to help customer verify that they are purchasing a duplicate instance of the resource type they saw on display.

How much are the resources organized?

A lot of detail and effort is put into organizing and arranging the display furniture in the showroom, because that is the main interface for customers. First they are arranged in an aesthetically pleasing manner to draw the customer’s attention. Every single resource needs to have very specific placement in order to reflect a real setting of a room. For example, coffee tables must go next to the couches and vases on top of tables or shelves. All display furniture also has reference tags that allow customers to search for the same furniture type later on in the warehouse. On the other hand, household items in the Market Hall, are not organized with such great detail. Like most other stores, similar resource types are grouped together based on its intended uses (kitchenware vs bathroom items) and duplicates of the same resources are just placed together on a shelf or container. In the warehouse, each unique instance of packaged furniture is assigned a unique ID so Ikea can keep track of its inventory and sales. This important information is then channeled through the Ikea website, so customers can check online whether or not an item is in stock in a particular store.

When are the resources organized?

The packaged Ikea furniture is organized in the warehouse as soon as new shipments come in. The display furniture is arranged seasonally to reflect the newest designs that are coming in. Product information is updated nightly or every couple days to collect the current stock levels at each Ikea store and to update the website.

Who does the organizing?

Ikea store manager or designers oversee the design and arrangement of the showroom. Other employees organize the packaged furniture when they receive and unload shipments. Some organization is automatic. Every time a customer purchases furniture, the barcode on the package is scanned, and the inventory is automatically updated in the database.

Other considerations

There are always some tradeoffs in every design decision. While Ikea is a great place to spend a lot of time browsing, it is not well suited for those customers who want to quickly search for specific item and leave. It first takes a long time for customers to navigate through the store to get to the right section. And within that section, it is often difficult to find the exact location of the item. Smaller items such as towels may appear multiple times throughout the store in the Market Hall and the warehouse. This further adds further confusion in the search process. But In the end, the designer chose a system that prioritized browsing rather than doing a precise search for a single item.