Background on IKEA
IKEA, a Swedish company with its headquarters in Leiden, was founded in 1943 by Ingvar Feodor Kamprad. It is hugely recognized for its Scandinavian style designs and has grown tremendously over the past years thus becoming the world’s largest furniture retailer. The company designs contemporary style models for its appliances and furniture and it emphasizes its affinity towards eco-friendly meekness. Additionally, the corporation is known to concentrate and develop its cost-effective, operational structure, continuous performance and product evaluation and innovation techniques.
As of 2016, IKEA owns and operates 389 stores in 48 countries with a whopping number of 12,000 products approximately. The current President and
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IKEA’s Vision:
IKEA’s motto is ‘To create a better everyday life for the many people’. It strives to present a broad assortment of elegant, efficient and economical home furnishing products that many people could afford to buy. It also encourages its employees to grow both in their personal and professional lives. Sustainability has always been the root of IKEA’s strategy, product design and development throughout its evolution. With primary focus on meeting customer’s everyday needs economically and efficiently, they are able to achieve their goals with positive environmental and social impacts.
Historical Data: (IKEA,
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His main idea at that time was to satisfy customers at reduces prices. In 1953, he opened the first furniture showroom in Älmhult, Sweden. This showroom gave the customers the comfort to check out the furniture before buying them. The first IKEA store with 6700 square meters was opened in Sweden in 1958. During this period, Ingvar Kamprad started fine-tuning his entrepreneurial skills in the furniture retailing industry with a careful probe in furniture design, self-assembly and various advertising techniques.
The 1960s-1970s Era: The IKEA concepts starts to take a firm ground. Many of the IKEA’s milestone products such as POÄNG and BILLY bookcase came to picture in this period. The first IKEA restaurant serving Swedish food was opened in Älmhult, Sweden. Ingvar Kamprad delved further into developing the company thus expanding it to countries such as Norway, Demark, Switzerland, Australia, Germany, Austria, Canada and Netherlands.
The 1980s Era: More IKEA masterworks such as KLIPPAN, LACK and MOMENT arrive to the market leading to the initial steps of today’s modern IKEA. It also extensively reaches out to new markets such as USA, Italy, France and the
Marketing analysis: Hafren Baum retails luxury home furniture which makes the demand for it being cyclical. Over the last two years from 1994 to 1995 the net sales for Hafren Baum have fallen by 21.05% and 1.24% respectively. There are number of factors which have caused this change. According to German economic statistics, we can see that the economy slowed down which forced retailers to reduce their prices to keep the old demand. Despite the fact that Hafren Baum constructed 3 more outlets in the expectation of higher sales volume their sales went down by almost 18% which seems to be the result of boom turning to bust in 1993. Later in 1995, the economy started recovering, but the sales for small retailers like Hafren kept declining. The
DirectDesignNL. 2011. Eames Lounge Chair van Vitra debut in 1956 on NBC. [Video online] Available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QnLiiP3-d9c [Accessed: 10 Nov 2013].
1. What were the sources of IKEA’s successful entry in furniture retail business in Sweden?
and will work their best to achieve them. With this management style, IKEA can use various methods of communications (see E5). However this type of management style could make decision-making slow and is not appropriate to some businesses such as, manufacturing industries. The organisational structure, culture and the management style of IKEA have to perform successfully so that, together they can achieve the company’s objectives. For example, to increase profitability: the communication within the organisation have to be clear so that, staff can understand what jobs have to be carried out; staff have to be motivated to perform the job; the relationship between managers and staff have to be strong and committing; the organisation have to encourage staff to create new ideas and share them amongst others; democratic managers have to listen and act on the opinions of workforce, democratic managers have to make sure that the workforce is well aware of the objectives of IKEA, etc.
Bowell states that IKEA is establishing themselves “...as a leader in creating and running innovative sustainable places.” This means that IKEA is taking their job seriously. They want to be the ones to help and inspire their customers into following the methods of sustainability. The “People & Planet Positive Strategy” allows the customers individuals to learn about how they can make a change in their own lives by the implementation of products from the company. IKEA is in the process of adapting to the lifestyle of being environmentally friendly. It is necessary for them to become net-positive. Most appliance retailers do not maintain this type of
Each category will be analyzed using IKEA student info website, IKEA group corporate website, resources from University of Phoenix library and articles from magazines. The key questions that the author will address are
1947: The first store opens in Västerås, Sweden, selling women’s clothing. The store is called Hennes
DataMonitor, 2007. IKEA major retail competition in the US are: Furniture Brands International Inc., Office Depot Inc., Sauder Woodworking Co., Stanley Furniture Company, Inc., and Staples , Inc. This paper will identify the key macroeconomic variables that affect IKEA and the retail industry as a whole. To better understand the effects of such variables upon the industry, two specific variables will be developed further.
The world is developing every day and we continue to discover new and innovative ways to better our quality of life. A trend that everyone seems to be focused on is saving the environment, which is also known as sustainable living. Not only does this apply to our lifestyle and environment, but it also translates into design. Sustainable living is becoming more popular around the world and is a lifestyle using skillful and sensitive design. It eliminates negative environmental impact and requires renewable resources. We each have decided to research different furniture companies to broaden our knowledge of the innovative practices used in each company. Throughout our paper we will introduce each of our companies and the products and practices they use to produce sustainable furniture. Our research will show that sustainable furniture design is beneficial to consumers by allowing them to live a more environmentally friendly lifestyle as their manufacturers develop innovative ways to make renewable furniture.
Another example of IKEA’s international strategy in building good relationships with suppliers is in Asia, especially in Vietnam, where IKEA expanded its own supply base. Vietnam manufacturers offers low cost labor force and not expensive raw materials, while IKEA provides the view of creating a long-term, high-volume business relationship, and advice on finding the best according to the price raw materials, setting up and bulding factories, choosing what machines, equipments
Firstly, the history of IKEA International A/S is needed to be described. The company is based in Denmark. It is one of the world’s top retailers of furniture, home furnishings and housewares. The company designs its own items and their items are sold in more than 140 IKEA stores. The store is spread throughout approximately 30 different countries worldwide. IKEA distributes its thick catalogs once a year in the areas surrounding its store locations. Also, it peddles its merchandise through mail order. Additionally, the company offers high-quality items at low prices as their character. Then, the company buys items in bulk, ships and store items to save money for itself and its customers.
The success of Scandinavian furniture design lies in providing the quality that people seek as well as its availability to the public. The major development in production of this type of furniture happened in the 1950s. There was a movement that led to the manufacture of items to be accessible not only to affluent people but also to the masses. This increased the appeal of Scandinavian furniture and gave way to their proliferation not only in European countries, but also all over the
Sustainable design seeks to reduce negative impacts on the environment, the health and comfort of building occupants, thereby improving building performance. The basic objects of sustainability are to reduce consumption of non-renewable resources, minimal waste, and create healthy, productive environments (“Sustainable Design”). Focusing primarily on the sustainable design principles, there are five, including: low-impact materials, energy efficiency, quality and durability, design for reuse and recycling, and renewability. As sustainability appears to become the necessary trend in architecture, the question concerning the cost versus outcome of “going green” really an investment or a waste of time and money comes to mind. With our research provided below, we believe the expenses may truly be with the investment in the end.
E-commerce is available on Ikea’s website to selected countries, and they provide an e-mail address to customers who have queries about their business.
IKEA is more than a furniture store they are a company driven by values (IKEA, 2014). The company seeks to make their consumers lives easier by providing them with modern, innovative, inexpensive products which they use to tackle daily home activities. IKEA Group has 298 stores in 26 different countries (IKEA, 2014). The company’s vision is “to create a better everyday life for the many people” (IKEA, 2014, para 1). Using innovative techniques for creating, producing, and marketing their products IKEA can provide consumers with durable products for reason...