Advertising Strategy of IKEA

IKEA: Leading Supplier of Furniture

IKEA, which is a Swedish company, is a multinational group that designs and sells products like furniture, accessories and kitchen appliances that are ready-to-assemble. The company is thought to be the leading supplier of furniture in the world since the year, 2008. The latter has been made possible through different advertising strategies that have led to faster communication with the consumers. One of the major ways is through the use of ads. For instance, the great artist by the name Jason Heppenstall made a huge peregrine falcon sculpture, made from 17,000 Allen wrenches that were used in the opening of one of the largest stores of IKEA in Sheffield, England.

Messaging Consistency

Under the consistency in the messaging, the IKEA company is less concerned about the consistency of the images itself. Instead, the company is majorly involved in the debates that concern a wider audience or public. It has been contributed by the strategic human resource department that has completely come up with the new ideas that have made IKEA be on the map for the longest time possible. Hence, the human resources approach by IKEA is seen to be an essential element in skilled labor competition.

Customer Engagement

The Swedish company has been able to build automatic customer loyalty around the world. The unique offers to the customers make it successful. A good example is the narration of a customer who was overwhelmed by the new furniture in a flat pack together with instructions explaining perfectly on how to build. Moreover, a business student by the name Daniel Mochon from the Tulane University published a Marketing International Journal Research explaining “How Ikea Effect Brings Joy into What Would Be a Frustrating Situation”. The student shows how the customers are more interested in value a piece of IKEA furniture that they assemble rather than the already built item that is of high quality.

Furthermore, the building of customer loyalty is very vital.

In Mochon’s Journal, he noted that customers build a ”sense of competence“ whenever they build own furniture from the IKEA company. The latter may seem to be a minor addition but it seems to be working wonders for the company. By giving an individual a chance to play a major role in the furniture purchase has really contributed to the great success of IKEA and also built the basis for their success. Hence, through it, customers have been able to acquire loyalty as a virtue.

Ads Objectives

There are various objectives targeted by the use of ads in the IKEA company. Firstly, is to increase the sales by 15% within the year the advertisement has been implemented. Furtherly, the company targets at achieving a 7% return rate with newly acquired consumers. Many end up worrying how big companies like IKEA are able to retain their innovative capacities and roots. The extension of activities acts as an innovator by the ability to incorporate of Natural Step framework responsible for assessing the social sustainability of commercial activity. The innovative ways include a strong corporate culture, the formation of global networks of alliances and creation of the internal systems that contribute to innovation.

Description and Execution Style of the Ads

IKEA makes its ads by collecting and highlighting given stories from different parts of the world for the purpose of describing the year’s accomplishments, slips, and various accomplishments. By that, the company believes that the combination of people, many companies, and organizations together make and shape IKEA. For instance, the interesting story about the IKEA PS Pendant lamp has been able to win hearts of many and receiving of Red Dot design award. The story is about a young name by the name David, IKEA designer, was challenged to make unique object purposely to defeat the level of darkness in homes across the universe. As a result, the lamp was designed that ‘explodes’ whenever the string is pulled, giving out light and warmth to the people. The designer explains by saying, ”At IKEA we have an approach called Democratic Design, where every product we make needs to succeed in terms of form, function, sustainability, quality, and price,“ he says. ”It’s a way of ensuring that we bring high-quality design to the many.“

Use of Media

There are several platforms where the ads are readily available. The company has managed to acquire a good number of followers of Facebook and fans on the twitter. Not only that there are millions of fans but also the impressive number of retailers who follow up to make orders. There are six examples of Facebook campaigns that have been successfully done by IKEA. Firstly, there is UK store sleepover that hosted a sleepover in the Essex that was a correspondent response to fan group referred to as ‘I wanna have a sleepover in Ikea’.

Furthermore, there was also the Malmo’s Facebook showroom that entailed the use of Facebook picture tagging tool aimed at running a competition set for Malmo’s new store promotion in Sweden. Also, an Australian based couple that was IKEA-obsessed won a competition hence got a chance to be posted by the company. Lastly, there was the bedroom makeover competition carried out in the year 2011 in Hong Kong that gave a chance for the customers to win HK$10,000 of their products. Other social media platforms also used include Instagram, twitter, and youtube. For example, an ad on youtube of the explanation on how to put Christmas tree with the help of AR hence one does not have to be physically there.

The successful TV campaign that was posted on September 21, 2012, in Vizeum, created a big success in the bedroom department. The partnership was done with Channel 4 for ten months resulted in 10 spots in break nearest to 10: 30 all nights. The aim was to gain synonymy with bedroom: ‘think bedroom thinks IKEA’. At the end of the campaign, the company managed to get the £14m increase in sales as a result. The campaign objectives were to change behavior, accelerate sales, build awareness and make the brand to be more famous. The IKEA Family Magazine Spring is a catalog that is produced in 32 different languages delivered in 44 countries. The magazine gives a chance of discovery of new affordable solutions aimed at inspiring furnishing ideas. Moreover, there is a range of diverse products available at IKEA. The catalog is also accompanied by the built-in app that contains additional contents.

Sales and Promotions

Lastly, under the sales promotions, the company uses several marketing strategies integrated to maximize the profits. IKEA attempts to focus majorly on the product and price elements of marketing mix. That is, offer of lower cost for a great range of products. There is also use of mono-segment positioning for the products and the art of targeting a segment for the customers who are cost-conscious whose preference is the value of money paid by them. Another major strategy is the integration of many channels of marketing communication like sales promotions, direct marketing, and media advertising. The latter is the main channel used by the company to maximize its profits. The effective application of product placement type of marketing technique is also one of the notable cases of product placement by IKEA.